American Gangster is the typical underdog movie and follows the rise and fall of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a drug and crime lord the attempts by a squeaky clean cop Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) to shut down his operation. Following the death of his boss, Lucas becomes rises to this position and begins to search for a new supplier that will allow him to sell heroin in its purest form for just half the street price. He finds this supplier in the jungles of Vietnam and soon Lucas dominates the drug market putting opposing crime syndicates out of business and out of pocket. Meanwhile, Richie Roberts is heading up New York’s new drugs task force and having noticed the new influx of heroin attempts to find the source. This of course leads back to Lucas and Roberts tries to bring his legacy to an end.

Both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe give solid performances and as per Ridley Scott’s normal standards, the cinematography is nothing short of excellent and the action is directed well. However, being an avid fan of old gangster films such as The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America, The Untouchables and Goodfellas, I felt that this film lacked a certain sense of action and true gritty crime. The film focuses too much on Roberts life and these parts tended to drag and add unnecessary length to what is already a very long movie. Lucas was played well by Denzel Washington and this helped to carry the movie forward due to his interesting background and personality.

On the whole, American Gangster is a good movie but struggles to compete with classic gangster movies. I can’t help but feel that with all the acting and directing talent the movie is not as good as it could have potentially been. Improvements could have been made to the script to remove stereotypical scenarios (some of which were seemingly taken as a carbon copy of The Godfather) which take away from the films originality. This being said, if you enjoy crime movies, you will certainly enjoy American Gangster.