The “true” story chronicles Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). a heroin dealer who adopts the financial wizardry of his Italian mafia peers to run the Harlemites working under him, and Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe, his arm still aching from throwing telephones at concierges), a cop whose honesty makes him a pariah within the corrupt police community. Even with that handicap, Roberts spends the movie closing in on the bust he needs to put Lucas away.

Not that we care. Director Ridley Scott is so concerned with developing the paradoxes of these two characters (Lucas as a Pablo Escobarian enemy of the state, but a community philanthropist and responsible family-man; Roberts a good cop but a fuck-up at home) that he neglects the plot and, difficult to fathom, character development.

Indeed, his characters are chess pieces—their abilities limited as Scott clumsily tosses foreshadowing and extraneous information into this 157-minute epic, giving the movie an “oh, but first this happened” feel.
Because it’s based on a true story, we’d normally forgive the obligatory car explosion, cop vs. criminal shoot-out, drive-by shooting, bad guy’s suicide via .22 to the mouth; but the whole movie is a cliché. Worst of all, it roots for Denzel’s ruthless,drug-dealing Lucas.

If you want genuine, gritty, ghetto realism, watch Full House re-runs.

-- Eric Siegel