OVP: American Gangster (2007)

Film: American Gangster (2007)
Stars: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Cuba Gooding Jr., Josh Brolin, Ted Levine, John Hawkes, Lymari Nadal, Ruby Dee
Director: Ridley Scott
Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Supporting Actress-Ruby Dee, Art Direction)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

Movie stars are a rare thing.  There are a lot of great actors out there, but very few movie stars, so when two bonafide, indisputable ones team up for the first time, it's noteworthy.  There's a reason that Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe managed to score a Box Office bonanza in 2007-both have been major draws on cinemas for decades now, and the two of them teaming up in that surest of film genres (the crime drama) meant Box Office gold.  It also meant, unfortunately, a batch of tepidity from both of the actors who seem to be a bit lazy in this movie which drags and while very occasionally it's exciting, it generally just sits there without any energy.  This is disappointing for multiple reasons, not least of which is because this is a 158-minute movie, which is already stretching my patience even if we're talking a quality picture.  But principally it's sad because these men can be electric onscreen-these are two true movie stars, men who can basically make any picture fascinating, and yet they at best coast and at worst seem to be just reading dialogue, waiting for a latte.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film follows Denzel as a crime boss in Harlem moving heroin from war-addled Vietnam while Crowe is an impossibly good cop/aspiring attorney that never bends the rules, and sees himself punished for his actions.  The film is based on a true story, but you know how it goes by heart even if you weren't already aware of that fact.  The film rarely goes off the beaten path of the cliched bad guy who turns good, the good cop who is eventually validated, and the countless bodies both amass in the process of getting to the top, all-the-while both being vindicated in the end because they're the ones cashing the $20 million checks.  Honestly, the film is so tired that I almost don't want to even get into some of the worst aspects of it, but this is a review so I shall.

For starters, what's the deal with Denzel's girlfriend?  Did we really need the 24-year age gap between he and his onscreen girlfriend Lymari Nadal?  Was that really necessary?  Honestly, there's a point where perviness sets in, and I think it's when someone could comfortably be their love interest's father.  That really felt like something that needed to be commented on, quite frankly.  Crowe and his love interest had an 11-year age gap which feels a little eyebrow-raising, but at least that doesn't border on the paternal.

The characters themselves are deeply problematic, as we know very little about what motivates Crowe's Richie.  The detective is straight-laced in a world of corrupt cops, but why?  Where does this morality come from, particularly considering that it would be easier to be a little more corrupt (he likely would have kept his wife and son if this were the case)?  I don't buy "he's just a good guy" as an answer, quite frankly-no one is as ambitious as him and sacrifices as much as him and still ends up a "good guy" without a purpose.  Without it, he enters that unrealistic saint trope, which I find unappealing in films-no one is all good, and even if they are, they need a reason presented onscreen to be so.

I also feel the same way about Washington's Frank Lucas.  Frank is not all good, in fact he's ruthless and daring.  In one of only two scenes in the film that actually sent a jolt into the movie that I wasn't expecting, Frank shoots his enemy of the first half hour of the film, a seemingly low-grade competitor played by Idris Elba, straight in the forehead in the middle of a crowded street.  It recalls in many ways Sonny Corleone beating up his brother-in-law in its brutality, but unlike Sonny who has been established as an impetuous hothead, we don't see Frank make risks and mistakes like this very often, so what drove this?  His mentorship with a dead man at the beginning of the film is a cheap writing crutch-we have to assume that a lot of his personality has been formed offscreen, but that's still no excuse for these sorts of inconsistencies in the plot and character development.

The film received a pair of Oscar nominations, one quite memorably and one I'd frankly forgotten about until I started viewing the DVD.  The first was for longtime character actress Ruby Dee, who passed away last year and who played Washington's mother in the film.  Dee is a legend of the cinema, one who has won pretty much every acting award imaginable outside of the Oscar, so it's hard to begrudge the Academy wanting to correct a lapse that probably should have been addressed decades ago, but this is a pretty routine performance.  Dee gets one truly great scene, surely the one that cemented the nomination where she slaps her son while scolding him, but the rest of the film is completely forgettable.  I will say, in Dee's defense, that that scene is miles away the best scene of the movie, and the desperation in her voice speaks to a lot of character-development by the actress, enough that I wished her character had a bigger part, but it's just a 3-minute scene.  That's hardly worth an Oscar nomination.  I was a little bit more surprised at the adeptness of the Art Direction, which was also nominated-the scenes are brimming with tiny details, and we cover a groundswell of 1960's New York apartments.  This isn't showy work and certainly isn't glamorous, but it's very accurate and so I'm quite impressed that the Academy nominated it, as it's surely the best part of the  movie.

I'm not giving up much more time for this tedious little film (I am almost inclined to give it 1-star, but it never crosses that line into awful so I shall resist), and so I'll turn it over to you.  This film was wildly popular, so I'm sure it has its fans-are you one of them?  Does anyone think that Dee deserved an Oscar nod (or even a win), or was this entirely about honoring a cinematic legend late in her career?  Share your thoughts in the comments!