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Created Nov 10, 2007 03:52AM PST • Edited Sep 17, 2013 06:25PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Really Great 4.5

   Denzel and Crowe at the top of their games, combined with a compelling (if familiar), interesting and assured story make this an almost perfect gangster movie, just shy of the Godfathers and Goodfellas. It joins Eastern Promises – the other great gangster movie of 2007 – in near perfection.

   American Gangster’s shortcoming is a lack of memorable supporting characters. There basically are none, though Josh Brolin’s bad lieutenant comes close.

4. Acting

   Great 4.0

   Russell Crowe, hardly movie star handsome, plays his shaggy dog cop to charismatic perfection, while Denzel Washington acquits himself yet again as perhaps our most powerful movie star, here playing a low down scumbag heroin kingpin with such fierce rectitude that he commands our respect and admiration – movie stardom of a high order.

5. Male Stars Perfect 5.0

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars Very Good 3.5

8. Male Costars Very Good 3.5

10. Film

    Really Great 4.5

11. Direction Perfect 5.0

12. Play Great 4.0

13. Music Perfect 5.0

14. Visuals Perfect 5.0
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 2.4

17. Sex Titillating 2.0

18. Violence Brutal 3.1

19. Rudeness Salty 2.2

21. Reality

    Glib 1.6

    “Inspired by a true story” is Hollywoodspeak for “bring on the dancing girls!”

    That said, the movie nicely uses the reality that the power players of the late 60s were none too pleased by the success of a Kike Cop (Crowe’s Richie Roberts wears a discreet Star of David) or a Black Gangster (Denzel’s Frank Lucas was the superfly heroin lord of Harlem). My Man!

22. Circumstantial Surreal 2.1

23. Biological Natural 1.0

24. Physical Glib 1.7