BEFORE: Three hours long? This movie is three hours? What movie besides "Gone With the Wind" has any right to be that long? Jeez, I'm supposed to be packing for San Diego, my plane leaves in about 48 hours, and after this film I still need to watch 2 more before I go! I think I might have made a critical mistake in scheduling this movie right before my trip.
THE PLOT: In 1970s America, a detective works to bring down the drug empire of Frank Lucas, a heroin kingpin from Manhattan, who is smuggling the drug into the country from the Far East.
AFTER: Tonight's film is a bit of a twist in the chain, since Denzel Washington doesn't play a cop in this one, he plays the title gangster role, Frank Lucas. The lead cop, Richie Roberts, is played by Russell Crowe, and this is apparently based on a true story. (Washington and Crowe co-starred together before, in a film called "Virtuosity", with Washington playing the hero role and Crowe as the villain...)
As with "Training Day", this film seems to be all about contrasts - the different lives that the two men lead, the drug kingpin who lives in the lap of luxury, and the divorced cop barely making ends meet. While Frank Lucas is enjoying a Thanksgiving feast with his extended family, Richie Roberts is making a tuna sandwich.
There's another contrast established between Roberts, the honest-to-a-fault New Jersey cop, and Det. Trupo, the slick, well-dressed New York City cop from "Special Investigations", who wants to get paid by Lucas for not investigating him. Trupo and Roberts are set up as polar opposites, both working to get at Lucas, but in different ways. Roberts wants Lucas behind bars, and Trupo wants to leave his "cash cow" alone.
Lucas has a scheme to take advantage of America's involvement in Vietnam to get purer heroin smuggled into the U.S., and Roberts becomes part of the first Federal Narcotics investigation squad, eventually discovering that Lucas is the "mystery man" behind the sudden rise of more potent drugs on the NYC streets. It takes months of surveillance to identify Lucas's underlings, and to find one in enough trouble to flip and give them a way to take down Lucas.
And unfortunately, these months of surveillance are represented by an almost three-hour running time. I'd usually suggest that any movie over two hours probably could be trimmed down, but this is an epic story, covering years of crime and investigation, the rise and fall of a crimelord, so I'm hard pressed to find a place where the story could be simplified.
Once Lucas is eventually arrested, I at first thought that Lucas and Roberts were a little too chummy, working together to identify and arrest corrupt police officers - if Lucas is a gangster, why does Roberts believe all of his accusations against the cops? I guess they turned out to be true, and Lucas and Roberts did end up forming a friendship - Roberts eventually became a public defender, and took Lucas on as a client.
There are references here to the "French Connection" case - I do have that film on my list, but I'm planning to watch it next month, along with other drug-related films like "Blow" and "The Falcon and the Snowman". I'll stick with the Denzel Washington cop films, even if I have to watch two of them tomorrow - maybe I can fit another movie in early Wednesday morning, before I head out to the airport.
Also starring Josh Brolin (last seen in "No Country For Old Men"), John Hawkes (last seen in "The Perfect Storm"), Ted Levine (most famous for TV's "Monk" and also "The Silence of the Lambs"), Carla Gugino (last seen in "Michael"), Cuba Gooding Jr. (last seen in "Men of Honor"), Armand Assante, Ruby Dee (last seen in "Jungle Fever"), Joe Morton, Common, Clarence Williams III (last seen in "The General's Daughter"), and character actors Jon Polito (last seen in "Blankman") and Roger Bart.
RATING: 6 out of 10 search warrants
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