I thought this was another miss in Ridley Scott's hit or miss career. The glorification of Washington's character in this movie was egregious. Read his story and you will uncover a monster who killed a lot of people by his own hand, through his orders, and who the hell knows how many through the massive amounts of intensely strong dope his people sold.

The movie was poorly made despite that. Scott should have cut a lot more out of this movie than he did, but chose to go for epic length without epic quality (do we really need to see Denzel eating dinner and not saying a word? did that advance the story?) Little things bothered also. Scott, as accomplished and experienced a director as he is should not allow mistakes to show through like he did in this movie (green leaves on the trees in the middle of a New York winter).

Mostly my problem is with the story and how it's told. This would have been a much better movie had it made the villian (Washington) into the villain, and the hero (Russell Crowe) into the hero. It made them both the hero and in the end Scott can't make it work. DeNiro and Pacino were able to pull this off in Heat, Crowe and Washington aren't in American Gangster. Their one on one relationship paints them as allies, Crowe wants to bust the crooked cops, Washington wants to help him, mostly to save his own ass.

All in all this was an entertaining movie to watch, if you are able to forget the true stories behind the characters, and are able to forgive Scott for making it at least a half an hour too long.