Telling a true story doesn't excuse a filmmaker from making his movie stand out from the many others that have traversed similar ground.

| Original Score: 2/5 | May 1, 2008

Best of all, there are top-flight performances from both Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe who create interesting, rounded characters out of potential clichés.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Feb 12, 2008

Scott's not interested in fireworks but small implosions of the soul and ego.

| Original Score: B | Feb 3, 2008

One of the most intelligent gangster movies in years.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 4, 2008

Ridley Scott's American Gangster offers both belated history-lesson and demented hero-worship, and seems to be intended as a kind of gift to black America. One hopes that black America will have nothing to do with it.

| Original Score: 1/5 | Nov 16, 2007

Scott is something of a romantic at heart. His film is nowhere near as jaded or as hard-bitten as the '70s films such as The French Connection or Serpico that it hopes to echo.

| Nov 16, 2007

Here's a startlingly original true-life story told in an oddly unoriginal way. And that attempt at instant classic status in the title doesn't quite convince. It's got no more dark grandeur than American Idol.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 16, 2007

Sharp, observant and true to the period, the film-making is, on the whole, less determined to show its virtuosity than in Scott's other work.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 15, 2007

Length does not add substance to the drama, even where reality adds weight to the argument.

| Nov 15, 2007

A cocksure upstart that has swaggered onto the scene, confident that it can take its place at the table with the big boys.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 15, 2007

An entertaining romp through familiar cop-and-crim cat-and-mousery, bolstered by strong star turns from Washington and Crowe. Still, it has neither the intelligence nor the grip to jump from the merely good to the truly great.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 14, 2007

Like much of his oeuvre, Scott's scaled-up movie is bigger than life - and lesser for it. But while never digging deeply or darkly enough to match its own grand vision of itself, slick technique drives the story forward with pace and style.

| Original Score: 3/6 | Nov 14, 2007

Almost makes up for GI Jane.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 14, 2007

How much truth we get in the movie version is hard to say...nobody much cares if it's gospel, as long as it's riveting. Here, alas, it is not.

| Nov 6, 2007

A guaranteed shot of pure heart-pumping entertainment.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2007

For all its grit, style and atmosphere, Gangster never sweeps you away. It has neither the lurid bravado of De Palma's "Scarface" nor the intimate grasp of the criminal lifestyle you find in Scorsese or Coppola.

| Nov 5, 2007

Washington's steely grip on his impersonation of Frank Lucas holds the film together.

Full Review | Nov 2, 2007

Ridley Scott's listless Big Statement is a wheezy, hot air-inflated dud.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Nov 2, 2007

An intelligent, well-made and seductive movie.

| Nov 2, 2007

Scott guided Crowe to an Oscar in Gladiator, and once more he brings out the actor's vulnerable side.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 2, 2007