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Classic from Denzel Washington. And one of my favorites 10/10

No Country for Old Men -- 9

Wristcutters: A Love Story -- 6

Seraphim Falls -- 8

American Gangster -- 7.5

1/1 -- 13 Tzameti (Babluani, 2005, DVD rental): 9

Borderline 10.

An 8/10 doesn't usually mean a dissapointment from me. In this case it does. It offers nothing really new to the genre. Its really made, good entertainment. No way this gets nominated for best picture.

American Gangster, grade: A



Long title, long film. Great title, very good film. So rejoice, rejoice oh yee die hard Malick fans (you know who you are). This retelling of a classic and often told American legend is one of the most noteworthy pictures of the year. Casey Affleck all but lunges for the supporting actor awards in a startling performance of tragic, eerie obsessiveness. I for one didn't know he was this good. The Assassination of Jesse James is compulsively watchable with its enlongated lyrical prose that I'm willing to guess that oh, no one who loved 3:10 to Yuma will love this. For me the film (flawed by length and a slightly pretentious structure in its middle section) is a winner for performances, direction, cinematography, and for the ideas put forward by the smart screenplay. As much as we love our heroes, we really hate our villians. Just ask Robert Ford.

Fantastic. I love it. Dont take kids to see this!

uneventful and mediocre although well performed

In the early 1970s, Frank Lucas rose to prominence as a major player in the Harlem drug trade. Eventually arrested and sentenced to 70 years in prison, Lucas cooperated with state and federal prosecutors in exchange for a reduced sentence (he served 15 years). After coming across a profile of Lucas written by Marc Jacobson Lucas seven years ago in New York magazine, screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Gangs of New York, Clear and Present Danger, Schindler's List, Searching for Bobby Fischer, The Falcon and the Snowman) optioned Jacobson's article and developed a screenplay. Two false starts later, Ridley Scott (Kingdom of Heaven, Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, Blade Runner, Alien) stepped in to direct Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe. The end result is an often compelling, visually impressive, if unnecessarily long, crime drama, American Gangster.

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a driver, collector, and enforcer, works for a Harlem gangster, Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson (Clarence Williams III). After Johnson's unexpected death leaves a power vacuum, Lucas decides become his own (gang) boss. Lucas develops a brilliant plan to take over the dope trade in Harlem, going straight to the source in Southeast Asia and cutting out the stateside middlemen. Calling his brand of heroin Blue Magic, Lucas sells it at half the price and twice the purity of the competition. He convinces his brothers to leave South Carolina and come up North to work for him, becomes wealthy, marries a Puerto Rican beauty queen, Eva (Lymari Nadal), and sets up his mother, (Ruby Dee), in a lavish, plantation-style mansion. With the exception of a corrupt cop, Detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), who keeps coming around for handouts and threatening retribution for non-compliance, the future seems limitless for Lucas.

Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), seemingly the last honest cop in New Jersey, comes across a large stash of cash belonging to a local numbers game. Driven by a code of honor, Roberts turns over the cash to his superior officers, but doing that makes him a pariah with the other police officers. As the drug trade in Harlem, New York, and New Jersey expands exponentially, the feds decide to create a narcotics task force. Roberts' captain, Lou Toback (Ted Levine), taps Roberts to head up the task force. Roberts has to find other detectives who won't be easily corrupted. As Roberts begins and continues his investigation, he slowly realizes that a new player, probably not Italian, has taken over Harlem. Finding his quarry's identity proves difficult, especially as his superiors in New Jersey and the federal prosecutor's office refuse to believe that an African American can run such a sophisticated operation.

Structurally, American Gangster breaks down into two parallel stories, each meant to reflect on the other. In one, the template is Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather, tracking Lucas' rise to power and his efforts to maintain power in the face of opposition from other gangsters, corrupt cops, and federal and state prosecution. In the other, William Friedkin's The French Connection serves as the model, as an obsessive cop methodically pieces together a case against Lucas and his organization over several years. The two stories don't overlap as much as run parallel, converging only in the last half hour. It's almost immediately after the storylines converge that American Gangster loses the energy and momentum that characterized the first two hours (American Gangster runs close to two and a half hours) and gives way to a muddled, overlong epilogue.

The overextended epilogue, however, is only a minor problem with a film that delivers on just about everything else it promises, e.g., a solidly crafted screenplay by Steve Zaillian that, for the most part, will convince moviegoers to cut American Gangster slack for relying on genre conventions, riveting performances by Washington and Crowe, dynamic direction by Ridley Scott, whose attention for period detail is as meticulous as ever, as is his eye for visual composition and fluid camera movements, and taut editing that only goes slack in the last half hour. American Gangster may not belong to the pantheon of gangster/crime dramas, but it comes close.

The bustling streets of seventies' Harlem are shot with a tender justice by Scott, who saturates everything of colour in order to show a City draining of goodness before our very eyes. We have been lucky this year to experience two wonderful reinvigorations of well-trodden genres, with David Fincher's 'Zodiac' joining 'American Gangster' as one of the finest modern portrayals of its respective type. Indeed many comparisons and differences can be drawn between the two. One of the negative aspects of 'Zodiac' was its bloated runtime, and at a lengthy 157 minutes 'American Gangster' could be expected to drag also. But this potential pitfall is skillfully avoided by the director - who's use of a striding score and decidedly restless cinematography ensures that while the film may slow down in places, it never stops outright. The only thing that perhaps proves to be a drawback here is the fact Scott isn't attempting anything drastically new with regard to plot - and although the interesting moral interchange betwen his two leads is unique enough, the sometimes clumsy dialogue lets the film down in places. An element that can be forgiven however when considering how much focus is placed on action and reaction, body language, expression and emotion.

7/10 :fresh:

THIS MOVIE IS JUST GREAT