Scott doesn't bring anything new to the already over-exhausted genre

Rating: 5/10 (20 November 2008)

Really disappointing. I am not a fun of most of Ridley Scott's movies. I thought Blade Runner, although a triumph in stylish production design was a very dull experience. Gladiator had the same problems, although Joaquin Phoenix and Connie Nielsen gave excellent performances. The best film of his is one of his most mainstream, Thelma & Louise and it is vastly overlooked today as a great achievement in both story and eerie, almost ghoulish style.
I have to be very careful here because I know that in each of his films there are commendable elements and the same applies here. I don't know if it's the jumping back and forth between the two main characters or if it was the storyline of the Vietnam connection. It seems like we are being taught history instead of being absorbed in the story.
The plot keeps the two main characters apart for most of the running time, maybe trying for a Heat-like approach. The problem is that as individual characters they are totally uninteresting (a fact made even more sad when you think of the caliber of the actors, especially Russell Crowe). A subplot about Crowe's character is totally unnecessary and could have been cut right out without an audience noticing.
Denzel Washington is supposed to be charming and dangerous at the same time but doesn't really succeed. There are several gap in his storyline (mind you I have not seen the director's cut). He virtually goes from nothing to a big shot in 2 seconds.
At last, Crowe and Washington's big scene together at the end. It seems false, smarmy and you can almost see the winking at the audience. Okay, maybe that's exaggerating but if Scott was trying to emulate a similar scene in Heat, he failed immensely. The epilogue tells what later happened to Frank Lucas, and at that point I thought: "Who cares?" The story was uninteresting so why make a point of showing that it was actually based on real people.