In spite of technical facility, Ridley Scott tends to come up short in Storytelling 101. It’s long been his Achilles Heel. Get the narrative on track, and everything else is negotiable. So it’s a kick (and a relief) to see Scott, working off a Steven Zaillian script, consistently hit his story marks in this fact-inspired late ’60s-mid-‘70s tale of Denzel Washington’s cool, calm, strikingly vicious Harlem-based drug lord who uses military connections in Vietnam to cut out the middleman and score with the purest/best-priced heroin on the street. Tracking him down is Russell Crowe’s ultra-honest, iconoclastic cop, given his own Fed-backed unit to work around the systematic corruption of regular NYPD Narcos like Josh Brolin. In spite of some fussy presentation & an over-curated feel to the period detail, the story practically tells itself. And what a difference that makes. Even if it’s like Sidney Lumet for Dummies!* With nods toward Coppola’s THE GODFATHER (scores settled via visual fugue as church services play pedal point; and Michael Mann’s HEAT (a long delayed mano a mano confrontation over coffee). But you’ll buy it, something that can’t be said for much late Ridley Scott.
DOUBLE-BILL: *The Lumet influence mainly from SERPICO/’73 and PRINCE OF THE CITY/’81.
ATTENTION MUST BE PAID: Re-reviewed (after about a decade), this time off the shorter Theatrical Cut, which turns out to make a better impression than the Extended Director’s Cut.
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