I mostly enjoyed it while I was watching it -- despited getting a little peeved that they show him working a hand-held electronic calculator in 1968 -- and it had its exciting moments and wild '70s-era costuming, etc. But it was a disappointment. Yesterday Amy and I waited for the Veterans' Day Parade to begin and talked about the movie, and I ended up liking it a lot less.
My complaint after seeing it was that we don't actually get to know much about the "american gangster" it pretends to be about. You never find out how Denzel's character went so swiftly from driver to crime boss -- sure, he has a direct connection in Thailand for heroin, but he gets that because he has boxes of cash already. And they make a big point out of how the streets are chaos and need order, but they never show you how he managed to get that order.
Instead of getting to know the main gangster, we get to know the white cop, and guess what? He's so dedicated to his job he's a lousy husband and father, and he's an outsider among the cops because he's TOO honest. Hey, wait... I think I've seen this before!
Mostly Denzel goes around scowling and occasionally spitting out that famous Denzel smile, but that's about it. Russell, bless his heart, looks so average-joe you actually start thinking "okay, enough reality -- if we're going to have a by-the-numbers New York cop drama, how about some eye candy?"
Of course, the nude girls who work in the heroin room are all buff and slim.
Women may as well not be in these NYC cop movies. All they do is cry or look worried and pained, maybe spit out an angry "I CAN'T LIVE LIKE THIS!" speech or two. In this movie there's thirty minutes of film wasted on Crowe's boring divorce story.
It's well made, sure... and has all six of the black actors Americans recognize in the movies. It's gritty. There's an exciting scene where the cops raid a drug room. If you want to really ponder it longer than necessary, you can make something out of the way the movie seems to be saying the real bad guys aren't the murderers and drug dealers, the real bad guys are the corrupt cops. Oh, and the US military -- or enterprising soldiers -- are complicit in the drug trade. So all law enforcement (but for Crowe) is behind all the badness. The american gangsters, however, are honorable men who believe in family and community. That's a theme about as fresh as the rest of this hundred million dollar teevee show.
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