American Gangster

[directorperez92]

best movie of 2007 denzel is ten times better than any other roles. russell crowe brilliant. ridley scott probably has made the winner of the 2007 best picture oscar, and well diserved best director

[domenic padulo]

I'm afraid I have to disagree with this one. I felt fine with the movie when I walked out (and actually thought that I liked it quite a bit), but the more I thought about it, the less I liked it. I know that a lot of posters will disagree with me on this, but I've since begun to think the the movie is pretty weak, and feels more like a miniseries than anything else. The story itself is presented in a pretty vanilla way, and I've felt that the dialog (especially the the opening scenes) was incredibly hacky, and took and really put me off. A lot has been said about Sir Ridley's "tight" direction, but it really seemed to lack focus, and felt woefully imbalanced. I thought this was also blandly shot, with tepidly square compositions that never really achieved the grittiness that it was striving for. Unfortunately, American Gangster struck me as more Scarface than Goodfellas.

It was pretty interesting to see this in theaters at the same time as the re-release of Blade Runner. To me, that represents everything that Ridley Scott is great at, and how good he can be if he really tries. Maybe he's burnt out.

I reluctantly give American Gangster a t> I really wanted to love it.

[bradbrevet]

Domenic, I won't say I disagree with you completely, but in no way would I give this movie a thumbs down.

The reason I liked American Gangster was primarily due to its story, I thought it was fascinating to look at how Frank Lucas created his empire. The journey into the jungle was amazing and something I never expected to see and was very happy it was left out of the trailers.

It's not a perfect movie, and I am surprised there is some consideration for Best Picture, but I really did enjoy it.