This is a very long movie. I must admit that I felt every minute of it. It is not that it is a bad movie. The story of Frank Lucas (played very well by Denzel Washington) and his rise from aide to top drug honcho during the turbulent and decadent late 60s to early 70s is very interesting. I thought this story alone would have made a pretty good movie in itself.
His devotion to his boss, his commitment to his mother (Ruby Dee, with one very touching slapping scene, that earned her an Oscar Best Supporting Actress nomination), his relationship with his Puerto Rican beauty queen-wife, his violent streak (he has no second thoughts about shooting a guy in the head in public), and his business acumen (going directly to the source of heroin in Thailand, cutting out the middlemen), all make excellent cinema.
However, this interesting storyline is interrupted by so many seemingly interfering events that were given too much time. The entire story involving the life of Russell Crowe felt like an entirely different movie altogether. But since he is Russell Crowe, the story of this policeman-lawyer, needed to be extended more than it really should. The character of Josh Brolin of the corrupt cop Trupo is also given too much time. That one episode involving Cuba Gooding Jr. was also incidental, not really material to the flow of the story.
So overall, this is not a bad movie. I feel it needed streamlining. It felt like it was trying to tackle too much, thus diluting the total effect.
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