American Gangster

Alright so I got a hold of a copy of this and watched it last night and I was not impressed. Denzel was great as he always is but I just felt this movie has been done before. The drugs the mod but from a different perspective just did not grab me. Also the movie was way to long considering the last 10 min was all I really enjoyed. I was comparing this movie to others greats like Blow, Good Fellas, Scarface and even Departed but it didn't stack up.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie. I wouldn't compare it to The Departed, as it's a different genre. But to Blow, to Scarface, Traffic, (French Connection) etc... sure.
IMHO, Washington carried this film so well. He's got that family-oriented, proud-to-be-American, cold blooded killer persona perfect. Like a Harlem Tony Soprano.

A.G. played out the story every bit as well as what people have been comparing it to, such as Scarface and Blow. It seemed to me like they cut a lot of the wealth-and-riches aspects of it's comparable counterparts. And probably rightly so, because it's more of a character-study, and Lucas didn't seem to be about that. He was more about running his business, and that was, instead, what the film focused on.

the acting was phenominal, as was the directing. The grit they were trying to get really shone through on screen. Really the only thing I would dare to walk away unsatisfied with is that it really did just coast along the storyline.

If you were expecting anything other than "Drug dealer makes it big then falls hard", you obviously stole the wrong pirated movie. Yeah, it had the same aspects as the ones people figured it would be like, but in my humble opinion, they had an entirely different take on it (think storyline, the cop aspect, the cinematography, character development) which really made it far different than any other movie about tons and tons of drugs that I've seen. But that's just me.