American Gangster (2007)

There are so many gangster movies that for one to be even worth seeing it has to do the genera particularly well and have something new to add. A little bit to my surprise American Gangster does both. There is this whole south east Asia angle, using military plans to smuggle heroin during the Vietnam War. There is the black angle, an African American gangster (Denzel Washington) getting the one up on the established Italian families, and they parallel his rise with that of a particularly honest (though also troubled) cop (Russell Crowe). You knows these guys and their organizations are on a collision course, and it comes in about as good a set piece action confrontation as you will find, but its what comes after that really made this movie for me, and I won't spoil it. Based on a true story. ****