In one of this year's most exciting and inspired big screen pairings, Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington star together in American Gangster as aggressive adversaries on opposite sides of the law. Washington is Frank Lucas, a real life folk hero of Harlem in the 1970s who rose from relatively nothing to become the most powerful gangster in New York City, a feat respected by his peers but resented by the Italian mafia families of the time who felt they had due claim to crime businesses in areas that Lucas was actively poaching. Crowe plays Richie Roberts the New Jersey police detective who is put in charge of the newly formed narcotics division, and therefore in direct opposition to Lucas' blossoming cocaine business. Though the two share few scenes together, they both loom over one another's shoulders with the kind of larger than life presences that endure even once they've left the frame. It's this pair of combustible performances that elevates this overlong, overstylized crime epic from a down in the gutter thriller to a rich portrait of opposing ideologies.As gritty and raw as director Ridley Scott aims to be with this film, his careful framing and artful eye keep it seeming mostly like a fabrication. Beauty in film is rarely a flaw, but here it works largely as an all purpose sanitizer, taking the violent and disturbing events of the film and packaging them much too neatly. The rough edges here emerge in the ensemble's nuanced performances, which are the only places in which any sort of honesty comes through. Elsewhere this is an all too calculated exercise in "cool violence." There's a number of interesting angles that could emerge from the Frank Lucas story and though this film is jam packed with too many subplots and turns of events, it never seems to capitalize on the complexity of Lucas' reputation as a local hero but legal villain or his moral ambiguity as a take charge leader unafraid to kill the people that stand in his way. We get more than a few moments of Washington being authoritatively badass, but where's the real depth in that? Where we find the richness of character is in Washington's explosive eyes and steely expression. He does more legwork for the character in single frames than the whole film does with an abundant 157 minute runtime.
Investigation films can more than sustain a 3 hour duration. They work because they are constantly jumping from one pursuit to the next. It's not one long film but connected episodes that figure into one big case. The investigation is like a living thing that can shift power, perspective, and character goals in an instant. All of that kind of great drama can be found in other films of the sort such as David Fincher's Zodiac from earlier this year. Sadly the intoxicating thrill of the chase is entirely absent here. The characters don't slowly get closer and closer to one another. There's not a searing slow build thrill to be had at all. It's mostly endless exposition, some light investigation, and then a big climax confrontation that feels heavy-handed and unearned. When the two men at the film's core finally meet there's no magnetic intensity. There's nothing much at all except two talented actors cast in a beautiful frame by a brilliant director. It's like the movie never really kicks in. It's stuck as a sketch of what it could have been had the characters been more riveting and the story more passionately crafted. What's here is executed perfectly. It's just as cold and detached as any story about murder, death, and cocaine could possibly be.
Grade: B
