American Gangster is a film in the style of The Godfather. The pacing is good, the plot coherent and well structured and the acting throughout and by all actors is excellent. Russel Crowe plays the character of the lead investigator with a lot of restraint (for a change) and actually does not try to mug his way through, he even injects a fair amount of subtlety to the part.

Denzil Washington is great as the top gangster with the right amount of smooth charm balanced with moments of crazy madness. The art direction is really excellent with scenes depicting the late 60’s and early 70’s with all the right colours, cars and fashion styles but all looking a bit worse for wear. Even the colour of the sky looked right – from my childhood memory of 1968/69.

I would throughly recommend this film even though it is quite long it is well worth a few loo and tea breaks.