American Gangster

We watched American Gangster this weekend. It was a good movie, but boy was it long. We did watch the extended cut. It felt like four hours, but clocked in at under three.

American Gangster

**START SPOILERS**

Denzel Washington like the bad boy role. He really does. This is basically the heart of this movie. Denzel can pick his roles, and to pick one where lights people on fire, shoots people walking down the street, buys/sells drugs, and much, much more means he wants a role like this. Maybe he thought this would be another Oscar winning performance - but no, this movie is almost laughable. I always laugh at a movie that starts with "Based on a true story." No matter what the movie I always think the movie is based on the true story of "there was a planet named Earth" and the rest is made up. Really, I just do not get it. Either the story is true or it is not true. Which is it? If it is not all true, please do not act like it is true.

Russell Crowe is the good guy, a super-honest cop that even turned in almost one million dollars (and this was in the 60's or 70's - when a million dollars was ALOT of money). The bad news is that the movie spends the first 20 minutes letting the viewers know that Russell is good and his partner is not. This should have been a quick 5 minutes for the movie, but it wasn't, it was an omen that everything in this movie would take 4 times longer than it should.

The lowdown - and I do not want to give up too much, so you can rent it and be surprised.

Denzel bad guy, Russell good guy. Denzel's boss/mentor dies. No one is in charge of crime. Denzel decides to go into business for himself. Business being drugs and other crimes. Denzel goes to foreign country to get drugs, uses friends from the military to get drugs to US. Russell is slowly moving up the ranks of cops. Becomes leader of organized crime task force in New Jersey. Russell unravels the drug rings of Jersey - and it leads him to New York City. He has most things figured out - but does not know the big boss. Denzel gets a big head and brings his family in and they cause trouble. He gets a girl and she causes trouble. Most notably the outlandish jacket that he wears to a boxing match (Louis vs. Ali) which gets him noticed by Russell. Russell begins to figure out who he is and starts to build a case around him. Things start to unravel for Denzel and he gets caught by Russell. Denzel gives everyone up that he can to get his sentence down to seven years. In the end Russell and Denzel are friends.

**END SPOILERS**

This movie was OK, it just went on forever and ever and ever. I mean it, it seemed long! I give it 3.25 stars (I can't decide between 3 or 3.5) out of 5. You could rent the movie, but then my review wouldn't seem as good.