Click here to copy URL

American Gangster

2007

Ridley Scott

Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Carla Gugino, Cuba Gooding Jr. ...

7.6

78,206

Thriller. Drama Nobody used to notice Frank Lucas, the quiet driver for one of the inner city's leading black crime bosses. But when his boss suddenly dies, Frank exploits the opening in the power structure to build his own empire and create his own version of the American Dream. Through ingenuity and a strict business ethic, he comes to rule the inner-city drug trade and floods the streets with a purer product at a better price. Lucas outplays all of ... [+]

	Author	Review
United States	Peter Travers Rolling Stone	"Call it the black 'Scarface' or the 'Harlem Godfather' or just one hell of an exciting movie, but the fact-based, 1970s-era American Gangster is already looking like a major awards contender (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Todd McCarthy Variety	"[It] is absorbing, exciting at times and undeniably entertaining, and is poised to be a major commercial hit. But great it's not (...) Though it achieves a decent momentum, pic feels its length."	NEU
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"This is an engrossing story, told smoothly and well, and Russell Crowe's contribution is enormous (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
United States	Manohla Dargis The New York Times	"Greatness hovers just outside 'American Gangster,' knocking, angling to be let in (...) Like many moviemakers (and watchers), Mr. Scott loves his bad guy too much."	NEU
United Kingdom	Peter Bradshaw The Guardian	"Here’s a startlingly original true-life story told in an oddly unoriginal way (...) It’s not cliched exactly; it’s just very, very familiar (…) Rating: ★★ (out of 5)"	NEG
United States	Kenneth Turan Los Angeles Times	"Finely made and richly satisfying (...) [It] is re-creating myths, and it’s good to see that the movies haven’t lost their touch where that kind of work is concerned."	POS
United Kingdom	Stella Papamichael BBC	"There's a raw energy about Scott's direction and a smouldering livewire performance from Washington that keeps you on edge (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	J.R. Jones Chicago Reader	"With one of these two alpha males anchoring nearly every scene, Scott really can't go wrong, but the lead characters are pretty thin, a fact highlighted by generic subplots"	NEU
United Kingdom	Andrew Collins Radio Times	"A classy crime fable that succeeds despite sidestepping the electric set pieces of such genre maestros as Martin Scorsese or Brian De Palma (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	James Berardinelli ReelViews	"While the story is rarely dull and there's plenty of material to fill up the more than 2 ½ hour running time, there's an overall absence of dramatic tension (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 4)"	NEU

Return to movie

We encourage you to check the reviews' original sources. Intellectual property rights of these reviews belong to their authors and/or the correspondent media from which they have been extracted. If you'd like to help us to add more reviews to your favorite movies, just send us a message.