Movie Review - American Gangster

Saw this movie in the theater on opening night and below is my review on it.

Based on a true story about the first black gangster, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), from the beginning of the movie you're not sure who is a good guy and who is a bad guy. And in fact, for the longest time, there are no good guys...only bad guys and badder guys....all the while showing gray areas that, yes, he's doing illegal things, but he's taking care of his family and he's not getting greedy with his profits. Frank is the ultimate gentleman who has respect for those that deserve it but at the same time, he has a business to run and if you cross him, he kills with no hesitation. Within the first 30 seconds of the movie, there is a guy who is lit on fire and then has an entire clip put into him, so if there was any question of if this movie might be violent, it was answered pretty quickly. There was also one scene in the movie that was so shocking it had the entire theater exclaiming "OH MY GOD!!!". (Obviously, I'm not going to give that away.)

You also have Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) who is a lily-white cop after the bad guys (who include crooked cops) and it takes him awhile, but he eventually figures out that Frank is one to be watching. Of course his superiors do not believe him because there has never been a negro gangster before and Frank has played it cool making a LOT of money selling 100% pure heroin for several years without anyone being the wiser.

One of my favorite scenes was where Frank and Richie are together talking at the end of the movie. And of course the many shocker scenes were good because they really did catch you by surprise. I think even the experts who just KNOW what's going to happen next will be caught off guard. I don't want to say anymore about it, though because I don't want to give away too much.

EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT movie!

And, I am excited to say that even though this movie was 2 hours and 37 minutes long and even though it was VERY cold in the theater and add on top of that I was already tired from not getting much sleep last night (because the dogs kept waking me up) I stayed awake thru the entire movie. Didn't even doze once. :] Great action! Great storyline! And of course, with Denzel in it, you really can't go wrong, anyway.

One tiny little disappointing thing.....as many times as I saw the behind the scenes for this movie (on the First Look pre-show at the theater), the way they always ended the segment, which is also in the trailer, was Frank dropping his pistol, turning away from the camera, and walking out of the room. That was a very dramatic scene and I was looking forward to seeing where they were going to place it in the movie, but they never did show it. So I'm hoping that once the dvd comes out, there will be bunches of deleted scenes that will include that one and hopefully a commentary to explain WHY it was omitted.

Vixy :]