Friday, November 02, 2007

'American Gangster': A Direct Hit


In "American Gangster," time doesn't fly, it explodes.


The thing is 2 1/2 hours long; it feels like 40 minutes.

Drug lord Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, strolls the streets of Harlem in Ridley Scott's film, also starring Russell Crowe as honest cop Richie Roberts.


Whether it's the next great American crime movie or simply this year's professional stunner will be determined over the next few months. For now, it's enough to say that the story of the rise and fall of an African American drug kingpin is relentlessly told by the English director Ridley Scott ("Gladiator," "Black Hawk Down"); it just keeps on coming.


Starring Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas, a beneath-the-radar Harlem heroin impresario who puts together an astonishing organization before anyone notices, and Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, the Jersey detective who tracks him, the movie has the aspirations of a crime-and-punishment epic, a superb feel for time and milieu and an almost subliminal feel for myth.


Washington is brilliant.
He makes you fear Frank.

Yet he also makes you love Frank.
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