It's Been Done To Death And Much Better Too By Italians

Rating: 6/10 (22 November 2012)

You'd think a film based on the true story of how America got swamped by heroin would be a totally compelling piece of cinema wouldn't you ? So would I and yet before tonight I'd seen this movie twice and after seeing it for a third ( Make that a final time )I've found it a very unengaging and unmemorable movie and I've never been able to put my finger on as to why ?
Ah now I know . I've been reading through the comments pages and the same names keep cropping up - Scorsese , DePalma , Coppola and Mann . Directors who have made a name for themselves by directing gangster movies . Maybe Ridley Scott is the wrong choice for director but no doubt he was trying to break away from the corner he'd painted himself in to by continually directing historical epics . The irony is that Scott fails to bring a sense of time and place . It's not enough to play the Spencer Davis Group as people walk down a steamy American street in slow motion . A film with this type of setting is crying out for a New Hollywood brat like Scorsese to bring it to life . Scott merely gives it artificial respiration
That said Ridley Scott isn't helped by the popular culture we live in . This type of story has been done to death . An American gangster film has a fatherless figure pursue the American dream through criminal means only to find that the dream becomes a nightmare and it costs them everything . This goes all the way back to the Warner Bros movies of the 1930s , Coppola during the 1970s and Scorsese in the 1990s . Cop tries to get in to the psychological machinations of a crime gang ? HEAT by Michael Mann . The turn of the century also saw massive critical acclaim for THE WIRE an ultra realist type of TV show where some cops try to bust a drugs gang so this overproduced cinematic comes across as being vey old hat and brings absolutely nothing new to the table