KEY POINTS:
Herald rating: * * *
Cast: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe
Director: Ridley Scott Rating: R16, contains violence, offensive language, drug use and sex scenes
Running time: 157 mins
Screening: SkyCity, Hoyts, Berkeley
Verdict: Druglord epic less than the sum of its high-calibre parts
The first frame has some poor unfortunate getting set on fire and shot. The movie which follows swings from heroin-soaked Harlem to Apocalypse Now country and back. Along the way, it stops in the audience of an Ali-Frazier fight where its stars - playing brutal business-minded druglord and brutally honest cop respectively - share their first scene together, reminding that this too is a clash of heavyweights.
But for all its violence, its actor muscle, and director Ridley Scott's strident efforts to create something mythical and epic from its true story, it still feels like there's something missing in American Gangster's two-and-a-half hours.
Its two-rail approach to its storyline makes it longer, if no deeper. For most of its duration it's tracking the contrasting lives of pusher and policeman.
Importing his own heroin from Indochina via American soldiers serving in Vietnam, Frank Lucas (Washington) took on the American-Italian mafia, crooked cops, and his black neighbourhood competitors to become the drug kingpin of Harlem in the early 70s. It took Richie Roberts (Crowe), an incorruptible detective to figure out that Lucas isn't working for anyone but himself.
The film wants to compare and contrast the two men - both outsiders trying to rise above the ordinary and the unethical in their respective worlds. But the juxtaposition soon starts to feel redundant.
It's as if Scott couldn't decide who or what his film is really about - that the drug business is just like any other. Well, that's certainly spelt out loud and clear and Lucas starts spouting about "trademark infringement" to a rival when he finds his potent blue magic heroin is being diluted and resold under the same name.
And making a drug dealer sound like a legit business man with his own set of scruples is hardly original.
Then again, neither is anything much in American Gangster which has heavy illusions to The French Connection and The Godfather, as well as a 70s funk-heavy soundtrack which also feels decidedly second-hand.
Even Scott's usual visual flair feels muted among the ghettoscapes, which help give this the pervading feeling that his is a case of authenticity over electricity.
Sure, Washington's Lucas produces some sparks, usually every time he goes for his gun. But the same sense of nobility he's brought to so many historic figures before gets in the way of making Lucas convincing. Yes, he's a control freak with a mean streak but he's a devoted son to his mama and husband to his wife, he's employed his brothers, and dresses well when all around him are in superfly duds which say "arrest me".
But he's not exactly conflicted about being a family man and pusher number one - though Scott sure pours on the shots of the needle and the damage done to remind us of what a dirty old business he's in.
Crowe's Roberts is a solid turn in a part that doesn't exactly call for pyrotechnics. If anything, because of its head-to-head structure, Roberts' personal life - divorce, custody issues - is where the movie gets bogged down the most.
The film redeems itself at the end when both men finally meet and talk. But given what happened next as their fates become ironically intertwined, that feels like the place where the movie should start, not finish.
Which makes American Gangster, as intriguing as it mostly is, strangely unsatisfying.
