American Gangster

Good solid movie with some great parts in it...but no Goodfellas or even Scarface. In the end, I'm not sure Ridley was the ideal director for this. Like Michael Mann with Ali, he may be too reserved a filmmaker to get the most out a flamboyant story like this one. He tends toward the slick while I would have liked this film to be a bit rougher. I also think a little less of the detective's story would have been better, as his character wasn't that interesting, not nearly as interesting as Frank Lucas. I guess I was a little disappointed because all the elements were there for greatness, but it fell short of that for me.
 
Good movie, not great. Obvious influences from gangster classics, but nowhere as good. As much as I love to look at Carla Gugino, the 'good cop, bad family life' scenes were not needed at all.
 
Two things that really bugged me about the film, the strobe light scene made my eyes sting and I heard somebody in the row behind me say he felt like puking. As well as the close shot that showed the Wutang RZA tattoo on RZA, which could have easily been covered by a t-shirt sleeve.
 
I also agree that the ending felt a little abrupt. It was like they were taking their time moving along and then realized they only had about twenty minutes of film time left and had to wrap it up.

I don't like to compare this movie to other gangster classics because it's based on a true story which gives it an extra element of "damn" for me as opposed to something like Scarface which is fiction. The fact that, allowing for artistic license, these events really happened give this movie the edge for me, especially after seeing interviews with Frank Lucas. I really dug this film.

Oh, and Wu-Tang Forever! :Drogar-BigGrin(DBG)

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I went last night and I loved it. A lot of great acting. The story was good. RScott came through with some really nice visuals and detail that I haven't seen from him since Blade Runner. He can certainly add this to a resume that includes: Alien, Blade Runner, Gladiator, Matchsitck Men, Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven. Hmmm, the two best movies I've seen this year have both starred Russell Crowe...3:10 to Yuma and American Gangster.
 
Boom

Boom

Whoa whoa whoa.....just got back from finally seeing this. What the hell? I've seen less boom mics in a screening of Dolemite!!!!!!!

I mean seriously, how does this not get addressed before it's shipped to theatres? Now granted the theatre I saw it at, things seemed to be skewed top-heavy...some of the supers on the bottom were slightly clipped, and there was excess headroom above the talent. It's amazing how quickly seeing the boom can take you "out" of the moment.

ALSO, I'm all for RZA as an actor (go Wu Tang) but I also noticed that suspect tattoo. Twice.

One final continuity error I noticed, there were some graffitti "tags" on city walls that were not of an early 70's style.

My favorite line was something like, "That's a 25 thousand dollar Alpaca rug! You gotta blot it, mother-f-er!" And of course I"m going to be walking around going, "My man" for the next 3 months.

Back to my original rant, can any "film guys" explain why the boom mic ends up being seen in certain theatres? Whycum there isn't more quality control?
 
Deepfocus88 said:
Back to my original rant, can any "film guys" explain why the boom mic ends up being seen in certain theatres? Whycum there isn't more quality control?
Click to expand...

When shooting regular, non-anamorphic 35mm film, filmmakers are usually shooting in the 1.37:1 camera negative frame, and matting it (there's various methods, sometimes masking the monitor, some eyeball it, others put tape on the mattebox). It's a very common way of shooting 35mm for 1.85:1. The projectionist is supposed to matte a 1.85:1 mask when screening the film. I didn't see any boom mics or anything like that, because the projectionist did his job correctly.
 
Thanks for the explanation.
The fact that multiple people have seen this gaffe in multiple theatres sets off some red flags, at least in my book.

Every once in a while I'll see a mic on the big screen. But this film had more busted frames than a Hallmark store after an earthquake. Hay-oh!

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I just watched American Gangster the other day and wasn't very impressed. I've read every comment in this thread and think that a few people were high when they chimed in. Overall I thought it was barely OK, but pretty much missed the mark with me.

To be fair, making a gangster/mob film is a very hard thing to pull off. That said, this film was good in many respects. The fact that it was based on the 'real' Frank Lucas was enough to make me want to see it. They did a great job with the period (late 60's-early/mid 70's) despite a few small gaffs. Denzel is a great actor with a commanding presence and the gun/head scene was an excellent character juxtaposition doing it in front of his family. Russell Crowe is also an amazing actor and I have liked him in just about everything I've seen him in, which brings me to my big problem with the film....

Was Russell Crowe's character supposed to be a Jewish guy from New Jersey or an Australian transplant? Really. I think I may have missed that in the beginning... his character's backround. If he was an Aussie working in NJ, then, again, he was awesome. But if he was suppossed to be a Jersey guy he really missed.
I grew up in New Jersey, so it got under my skin when he was trying to get the accent and just plain missing. I mean all those Sopranos actors have to be looking for work...they can hit that accent.
Well, since I saw no mention of this on the board, it probably only bothered me....so I guess Hollywood does know what they're doing after all.
 
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