American Gangster
(R)

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Gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) names names to outcast cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe).

Damn if it doesn't feel like we're reliving the 1970s. A trumped-up, unpopular war, a lying president, a lockstep Congress, government programs that say no child left behind but mean no millionaire left behind, an air of creeping cynicism. What's next, the return of white suits with widespread collars and some groovy new episodes of The Partridge Family? With Zodiac, director David Fincher has already sifted through the 1970s and found clues to the deep malaise of our own era, and now along comes director Ridley Scott with his best film in years, American Gangster, a tough, absorbing, fact-based crime thriller set during the crime and drug-ridden 1970s.

Lucas gives his future wife Eva (Lymari Nadal) a gift.

Denzel Washington, in terrific form, plays a driver for a drug-dealing crime boss who muscles his way to enormous wealth and power by flooding New York's streets with the purest heroin imported directly from Southeast Asia with the collusion of the U.S. military. Russell Crowe is an honest, unconventional cop, mistrusted by his coworkers for turning in a stash of money from a heroin bust; he's also strong and understated. At first, the two seem like polar opposites, but as the action of Steven Zaillian's shrewdly written script plays out in scenes of violence and bristly tension, Washington and Crowe race toward an inevitable head-to-head due more to their similarities than their differences. Scott, who spent considerable time in 1970s Harlem as a budding photographer, clearly knows the territory. He is near the top of his game here and makes American Gangster a hip, sprawling epic that crackles with a sense of the deep corruption and duplicity of the decade, capturing along with it some of its street vitality, music, slang and tempo. It's a very good movie though not the masterwork its makers aim it to be; it doesn't cut deeply enough, doesn't have the resonance. But expect award nominations and maybe even a prize or two. American Gangster may be close to three hours long but it's well worth it.

by Stephen Rebello

credit: David Lee/ ©2007 Universal Studios. All rights reserved