excellent film by Ridley Scott

Rating: 8/10 (14 March 2016)

"American Gangster" from 2007 purports to be the story of drug lord Frank Lucas. My understanding is that it's about 1 percent accurate. However, the film, though long, is an excellent study of pervasive corruption.
The cast includes Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Josh Brolin, Ruby Dee, and Ted Levine (from Monk).
Washington plays Frank Lucas, a criminal who is determined to make it big in the drug trade. He flies to Thailand and arranges to have 100% heroin shipped to him, cutting out the middleman, and also putting the Mafia out of business. He calls the heroin "Blue Magic."
He brings his family up from the south and has them working for him in various fronts - auto shop, dry cleaner, etc., but what they're doing is selling heroin.
There is some discrepancy about how the heroin was shipped. In the film, it is as Lucas himself said, false bottoms in the coffins of dead soldiers. But someone else said it was in furniture.
Lucas has so many cops on the take -- he's involved three-quarters of the narcotics squad, the main cop being Detective Trupo (Brolin), a real greedy guts.
In the beginning of the film, we see the rise of Lucas and on the other side, how a special force was assembled to stop the sale of a drug called Blue Magic, which is Lucas' drug. The lead officer is Richie Roberts, who, with his partner, found $1 million in a drug bust.
When Roberts wants to turn the money over to the evidence room, his partner tells him that if he does that, no one will work with him - they'll think he can't be trusted and will report them. Unreal. But Richie turns in the money and is given the management of the new force and told to choose only people he can trust. Roberts ultimately passed the bar exam and became an attorney.
The real Roberts criticized Washington's portrayal of Lucas, saying he came off as "almost noble." Not to me he didn't. Roberts says that he was vicious, violent, illiterate. It's true that Washington did not play Lucas as illiterate. But in depicting his violence and viciousness, not acting overtly violent works better on film. Washington throughout seems reserved, somewhat soft-spoken, so that when he loses his temper, it's terrifying.
Though long, "American Gangster" doesn't really feel long and is an absorbing film with interesting character studies. Dirty, corrupt cops are all over TV and movies. I have a feeling they may be all over our police departments too.