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It’s hard to believe my next statement is true. This is the best film the Coen Bros. have ever made. With brilliant films like BLOOD SIMPLE and FARGO in their resume, it’s strange to see a new film from master filmmakers and know it’s their best work to date. I mean you don’t expect Martin Scorsese to make another GOODFELLAS, but then you probably wouldn’t have expected something equal or better than TAXI DRIVER after that film either. It’s invigorating to see established filmmakers better their own high marks.

Setting a somber contemplative tone is a voice over from Sheriff Ed Tom Bell (Tommy Lee Jones, THE FUGITIVE), who tells a tale of killer who knows he’s going to hell and doesn’t care. Bell has seen a great deal of violence during his career and it is making less and less sense to him. Soon he will be swept up in a manhunt pitting a quiet laborer against a heartless professional killer.

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Check Out the Trailer

I’ve heard Ridley Scott’s new gangster tale described as SERPICO meets SUPERFLY. The former applies more than the later though. This is because Denzel Washington’s Frank Lucas hates flashy pimp-dressing hustlers, but, like SUPERFLY’s Youngblood Priest, Lucas is making his way selling drugs for it’s a very tempting opportunity for a poor black man in the 1970s. AMERICAN GANGSTER actually reminded me most of Michel Mann’s HEAT, which also told the parallel stories of criminal and cop.

After his mentor dies, Lucas fights for control of the Harlem drug trade. To take an upper hand, he travels to Asia to buy his product directly from the supplier and uses the war in Vietnam to help smuggle heroin into the States. Dressed in nice, but not flashy, suits, Lucas runs his illegal business like a legitimate business. With his connections in Asia, he is able to sell a more pure product for half the price, putting his competition out of business or coming to him as a wholesaler. He even guards the image of his Blue Magic brand from two-bit hustlers like Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding Jr., JERRY MAGUIRE). He takes pointers from the Italian mafia by enlisting his family, because they are the only ones he can truly trust. But he isn’t afraid to threaten to kill his brother Huey (Chwetel Ejiofor, DIRTY PRETTY THINGS) when his younger sibling starts to bring too much attention to himself. Even though he is involved in a violent business, his family life is sound, buying a huge house for his mother (Ruby Dee, THE STAND) and developing a tender relationship with his beauty queen wife, Eva (Lymari Nadal, TV’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA).

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