It will hold your interest, but it's nothing that hasn't been done before, and done better (for example, HBO's superb series "The Wire"). Russell Crowe is capable of very good acting, and Denzel Washington is capable of excellent acting, but they both seem to be coasting here. Denzel is unable to make a character composed of such contradictory parts plausible-- he loves his mother and family enough to buy them a luxurious estate in the country, but is also capable of setting a man ablaze while he's still alive, them pumping a half dozen bullets into him as he burns. Not that unraveling the mystery of such a sociopath is possible by the most learned psychiatrists, much less an actor, but the best actors should be able to open windows of at least some understanding and plausibility into the character's psyche through the alchemy of their art. Washington is without question one of America's best actors, but his work here doesn't provide that illuminating quality (contrast it with his stunning portrayal of the brutal cop in "Training Day"). At the end of "American Gangster", the Frank Lucas character mentions some racist violence he witnessed as a child, but this is just referred to once almost in passing. Not that past trauma justifies criminal behavior, but the whole point of a film like this (I would think) is to make understandable to the non-sociopathic film-goer how a poor boy from a good family in North Carolina came to NY and transformed himself into a charming monster who became rich on the misery of countless others. There really isn't much more depth to Crowe's character (I don't know much about the real-life Lucas case, but I've seen other NJ detectives on TV scoff at the idea that Richie Roberts' was the one to break the case almost single-handedly, as is suggested in the film). Richie is a womanizer, an ansent father, dedicated and honest in his work, a bit of a crusader, but nothing is offered to explain how or why he became the way he is. In films of this type, the cop who is a womanizing crusader devoted to his "cause" has become a bit of a cliche, as has the powerful ganglord who is loving and compassionate one moment (they all seem to give out turkeys to the poor at Christmas) and explosively, brutally violent the next. For once, the Italian-American isn't portrayed as the leading criminal mastermind (with the exception of Armand Assante as an aging Mafiosi who works with Lucas...I think Assante has been playing aging Mafiosi for the past 20 years, hasn't he?) and the picture attempts to explore the lesser-known world of black organized crime, but...as I've mentioned...a show like "The Wire" has already done that so much more effectively. "American Gangster" will hold your attention, and there are worse ways to pass 2 to 3 hours, but it's not a classic by any means, and will be remembered in later years (I suspect) as one of the lesser films done by the usually superb Washington and Crow.
