'Gangster' goes like gangbusters in gritty crime drama

"American Gangster" -- in which Denzel Washington plays suave real-life Harlem drug lord Frank Lucas, and Russell Crowe is Richie Roberts, the chubby New Jersey prosecutor tracking him down -- wafts us back to a time when the streets were meaner and movies were better: the 1970s.

What an era that was! The incandescent movie decade, when ambitious, intellectual and rebellious classics like "The Godfather I and II," "Mean Streets," "Apocalypse Now," "The French Connection" and "Serpico" came at us thick and fast, is repeatedly evoked in Ridley Scott's new neo-noir epic.

Based on a New York Magazine article, "American Gangster" tells the double-stranded story of two men: Frank Lucas, a poor kid from North Carolina who combined business/street savvy, a strict personal ethic and a priceless East Asian heroin source to rise to the pinnacle of New York City's illegal drug world; and Richie Roberts, a good cop who became a pariah among many of his fellows for turning in a suitcase packed with a million dollars in unmarked bills, instead of keeping it, as most of them would have.

"Gangster" juggles and juxtaposes those two stories, granting both Frank and Richie nearly equal time, with a single dynamic collision between them. Throughout, the movie balances Frank's outwardly enviable, inwardly obscene rise to riches, against Richie's existence as a haplessly honest cop and dishonest husband.

So we see Frank in lush environs, hobnobbing with the rich and famous -- even enjoying ringside seats with his Puerto Rican beauty queen wife Eva (Lymari Nadal) at the first Ali-Frazier fight. And we also spy Richie's family life disintegrating as he scours streets full of addicts and killers, mostly Frank's victims and agents. A crook with "respectable" wealth and a cop with a bad home life: This weird contrast brings out the double edge of the American Dream, which can celebrate scoundrels with money and power, as long as they dress and act the part.

Just like "The Godfather's" courtly Corleones, Frank displays a seemingly "good" exterior, undermined when Scott cuts to scenes of drug-induced carnage and misery or when Frank suddenly explodes in fits of violence, setting men afire or repeatedly slamming an employee's head with a grand piano lid.

The production around these two guys is meticulously detailed, impressively vast. Washington endows Frank with all the outward charm and inward chill the part needs. Crowe makes Richie another of his off-type smart doofus roles (as in "The Insider") and the deep, excellent supporting cast includes Chiwetel Ejiofor as Frank's more fallible brother Huey, Josh Brolin as the particularly bad cop Detective Trupo and Ted Levine as Richie's boss Lou Toback.

A special bow is due the great Ruby Dee, who plays Frank's Mama, and in one magnificent scene, vents all the moral anger and disapproval of Frank's "business," some carpers may see lacking elsewhere.

Are those potential carpers right? Are Scott and writer Steve Zaillian too uncritical? Are they shallowly glorifying Frank as a minority winner besting rich, white capitalist-crooks at their own game? And is there too much of Richie?

Those are understandable feelings. Washington carries immense star cache even in his villain roles ("Training Day") and Lucas himself consulted on the film and was sometimes present (in a wheelchair) on the set.

But perhaps we're too used to crime movies that, unlike those '70s classics, give us pure, unmixed good and evil. If Frank is shown as a "good" family man (with one scene even evoking Norman Rockwell) and if Richie is a philanderer, dumped by his wife, that simply means this movie has more respect than most for the ironies of real life.

And in that life, as the movie shows us, Frank confused people too, finally winning one tribute from a most unlikely source. "American Gangster" not only recalls the great violent movie triumphs of the '70s; it exposes some of the bizarre contradictions that lay beneath them.

"American Gangster"

3 stars

out of four

Opens tonight

Starring As

Denzel Washington Frank Lucas

Russell Crowe Richie Roberts

Chiwetel Ejiofor Huey Lucas

Josh Brolin Trupo

Ted Levine Lou Toback

Ruby Dee Mama Lucas

Written by Steve Zaillian. Produced by Brian Grazer and Ridley Scott. Directed by Ridley Scott; A Universal Pictures & Imagine Entertainment release, in association with Relativity Media. Rated R (violence, drug content, language, nudity and sexual situations). Running time: 157 minutes.