- I am adding Ridley Scott to my “People Who Continue To Have Hollywood Clout For Reasons I Can No Longer Fathom” file. This file might also be referred to in its abbreviated form, “Overrated”.
- This movie is 157 minutes long and you feel every single second of it.
- It’s nice to see Denzel Washington playing a badass. Truthfully, though, I’d kind of like to see him in a comedy. Sometimes I feel like he needs to lighten up.
- This movie feels like a variation of every other gangster movie on the face of the earth without being remotely interesting. They go out of their way to tell us that Frank Lucas is an anomaly in the crime world because he’s a black man who did what the Mafia couldn’t in the drug world, which is what should theoretically provide an interesting angle for this movie that sets it apart from all the other Mafia-based gangster movies. But then they completely drop the ball and don’t use this to the movie’s advantage, instead choosing only to highlight it in a throwaway line towards the end of the movie about how Lucas represents change and progress and the Eyetalians aren’t interested in that.
- Costumes and music were great, but then again it’s hard to screw that sort of thing up for a movie set in this time period.
- I do not understand the appeal of chinchilla coats.
- Josh Brolin is suddenly omnipresent in movies right now. Speaking of which, I’m pretty excited for No Country For Old Men.
- I am indifferent to Russell Crowe in this.
- The posters for this movie are also amongst my favourite this year:
Although I do wish these designers would stop using skylines every five seconds in promotional material, from posters to trailers.
American Gangster
Save yourself $5 and go rent Goodfellas instead.
IMDB Plot Synopsis In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East.