American Gangster

Rating: 10/10 (3 November 2007)

American Gangster is based on the true story of Frank Lucas, who became rich and powerful after he started smuggling heroin into the country from Vietnam on planes returning from the Vietnam war. A detective named Richie Roberts, starts to investigate Frank and soon starts to gather enough evidence to eventually bring him and his drug empire down. American Gangster is an impressive film for many reasons. For starters the film has a very intelligent and well written script that is perfectly carried out by the acting cast as well as the film's director. The attention to detail and capturing the mood, music and just the era of the late 60's and early 70's was also well done I thought. The film is longer in length, but I found it to be a truly engrossing and captivating picture that I did not once find it boring or slow at all. I found the pacing to be just right to have enough of a character study going on, but also enough to keep us interested and entertained. The editing and stylish behind the scenes camera work by director Ridley Scott, I also appreciated as well as the very powerful and believable performances by Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe who play the two main leads. There have been a lot of different gangster films over the years and while this one could have been unoriginal and nothing new compared to a film like Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas, I felt that there was enough here to make this it's own movie without having to borrow ideas or formulas from other films that are similar in story and genre. This was a fairly original and captivating story which probably is helped by the fact that it is a true story and an interesting one at that. To capture the mood and era of when this all happened I give a big thanks to the film's screenwriter as well as Ridley Scott once again. Like I said earlier I was engrossed and captivated by this film and it never once stopped interesting and entertaining me. The film is more than a piece of entertainment helped by a great cast and crew who all do their best work here which is actually award worthy stuff and I wouldn't be surprised if this film did eventually get nominated for something in the next couple of months. This was an original and well done film that was engrossing and had a terrific pace to it helped by a great cast and crew that make this an award worthy film.