Why anticipate AMERICAN GANGSTER because it look interesting

basically i love denzel but deep down i know i can't take any movie seriously that has t.i. in a prominent role.

you are so wrong about everything in the world.

i'll deal.

i dunno about denzel anymore

crowe is the biggest hack of his generation

that is preposterous. assuming by "hack" you mean bad actor, or something. I don't even care about him that much, but he does just fine and there are a lot of bad actors about his age!

american disappointment :(

-- s1ocki, Thursday, October 18, 2007 3:54 AM (18 hours ago) Bookmark Link

:(

How did you see it, s1ocki?

Hopefully the soundtrack includes Common, TI and 30 Feet of Odd Grunts.

Steve Zaillian wrote AND directed this, right? Since the script for Traffic was frequently silly, why the high expecs?

why disappointment?

Steve Zaillian wrote AND directed this, right? Since the script for Traffic was frequently silly, why the high expecs?

-- Dr Morbius, Thursday, October 18, 2007 10:03 PM (48 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

-didn't direct this
-didn't write traffic

http://tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:qix800rYUCPPBM:http://www.lowculture.com/archives/images/jackie_harvey.jpg

lol

Steve Gaghan, Steve Zaillian -- MEH!

OK then, given all the crap Zaillian...

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001873/

...and Ridley Scott have made, why the high expecs?

it looked like it might be good

i'm anticipating we own the night.

I find it interesting that Scott hasn't really been doing promo for this, he's only talking about the Blade Runner re-release.

maybe he knows that Jay-Z is already obsessed with this, so dud

Still looking forward to this.

would this have been better if directed by Spike Lee, y/n?

it would have been better if it weren't so boring. so y probably.

I just watched the first twenty minutes of this and got really bored. Maybe I'll try again tomorrow.

The most you will get out of this movie is a rousing game of spot-the-rapper.

I saw an ad for this and thought the lead cop was played by Rowdy Roddy Piper. So.

http://nymag.com/guides/money/2007/39948/

also, you should read the original article. 100000x times more interesting than the movie:

http://nymag.com/nymag/features/3649/

Shit, great interview, thanks for the link!

Frank’s right. It is always about the product. Once I had a fight with a guy named Steve Austin. I had better dope. Steve knew it. He came up and knocked on the window of my car. “Yo, dude,” he said, “we don’t want you over here.”

the RZA!!!

and T.I.!!!!

"FUCK ME LIKE A COP, NOT A LAWYER"

it would have been better if it weren't so boring. so y probably.

-- s1ocki, Friday, October 19, 2007 9:01 PM

it would've been better if you had a flask of stoli in yoru coat

This looks crap.

u so crazy

standing on the verge of liking something!

it would've been better if you had a flask of stoli in yoru coat

-- moonship journey to baja, Saturday, November 3, 2007 8:23 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Link

probably the only thing that could've helped so ya!

OMG i forgot the best part: STODELMEYER!!!

"standing on the verge of liking something!"

This is true, I suppose! But this film still looks rubbish!

but it's got STODELMEYER

manliest cop ever

http://tv.globo.com/ENT/Tv/Seriados/Monk/foto/0,,6233128,00.jpg

Japanese Automaker

Black Rapper

all of the other ones i can think of are too offensive

this is even worse than I expected from ILX commentary

I've never seen a mainstream/legitimate movie so devoid of drama and characters and pretty much anything of interest. Even the acting was bad.

was it necessary to specify "mainstream"

I've seen far worse made-for-tv and low-budget sci-fi/horror movies, so yeah.

what's an illegitimate movie?

skinemax

photo essay on Frank Lucas
http://www.viiphoto.com/detail-story.php?news_id=625&b=latest%20stories

i thought it was decent.

cuba gooding jr as nicky barnes was kind of o_O

i dont know wtf jordan sargent is talking about upthread ever

anyone who said this looked like it was going to be bad is crazy. that trailer is one of the best film trailers i have ever seen

i think a large part of my enjoyment is the energy @ my workplace about it. everybody likes the story + denzel more than the movie tho

hey i liked this movie. good scuzzy nyc stuff going on here. josh brolin makes for a good asshole cop. russell crowe is really good but i noticed he has the weirdest "fast walk" in this movie than anyone since william peterson in "to live and die in l.a.". i forgot until i saw it how much armand assante loves to chew the scenery.

generally awful, obvious soundtrack choices though. and i don't think we needed a single minute of lucas' relationship w/his "beauty queen". AND i realize that while denzel is generally a good actor (and for this film it's not necessarily a drawback), he's turned into a really unlikeable screen presence.

he's turned into such a... nothing.

Mario Puzo's "The Godfather" -- one of the best-selling novels in the four centuries since Cervantes essentially invented the genre

does anybody know wtf Will is alluding to here? Cervantes wrote a gangster novel?

or is he saying novels are a "genre"?

this could have been great but it's not, it's shit. a big helping of blame lies with squidgefaced crowe doing his usual best at ruining films. the whole thing felt pompous too, esp with how both guys end up as flawed but basically heroic figures. just another great story turned into hollywood bullshit.

armand assante is a motherfucker

emm the movie wasn't shit. Crowe did a bangup job in both Yuma, this movie, and of course The Insider several years ago.

NOt as good as the Scorcese adaptations of Pileggi's screenplays but what the hell is?

get real, bo. this whole film seemed like a half-arsed vehicle for crowe to get an oscar - the thin boring backstory (he's an honest cop, yay! but a bad husband, boo. *such* a complex character.). he has this really off-putting way of rushing and stumbling through a film, huffing and puffing like the odds are stacked against him - someone just stick a t shirt on him saying "i am the downtrodden GOOD GUY" and be done with it.

you know how pacino in dog day afternoon was vaguely the bad guy because he was robbing a bank but once you learn his motivations you start to root for him? well in this film crowe is like that but in some parallel universe where earth is known as 'turd'

brolin is the best thing in this film, he owns crowe and washington both

you know how pacino in dog day afternoon was vaguely the bad guy because he was robbing a bank but once you learn his motivations you start to root for him? well in this film crowe is like that but in some parallel universe where earth is known as 'turd'

I love how this builds like it's moving towards something interesting then ends with "earth is known as 'turd'"

what a disappointment, this movie. so unexciting in every way. and annoyingly one of those movies like unbreakable that ends with a title card that says something like "and afterwards, lots more stuff that is way interesting than what you've seen here happened. THE END"

brolin and assante, actually. love those guys.

crap movie

This sucked hugely. I could've definitely watched two hours of naked chicks counting dough though.

wow this sucked pretty comprehensively.

i liked it well enough. not as good as it should've been but i wouldn't say it sucks.

It's pretty weak. Good score though.

brolin turned in the one intersting performance. denzel w on autopilot for the -- what? -- tenth year running. russell crowe wasn't always this bad at playing american cops convincingly.

REALLY odd structure -- they withhold the details of the smuggling operation till two hours in. and the trial at the end, which looks like it's going to be a frame for a bunch of stuff, ie how crowe used washington to take down corrupt cops, er... disappears! perhaps the extended cut does that better.

am i right in thinking, based on the end cards, that crowe actually defends washington in the trial? not clear enough, and would have been more interesting that, say, crowe's divorce proceedings, or the zillion inserts of news from vietnam.

there were some pretty shots by harris savides.

i'm anticipating we own the night.

-- lauren, Friday, October 19, 2007 7:25 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Link

^^ much better film

we own the night is ridiculous but sort of...entertaining...

i think i liked this film better right after i saw it because i usually enjoy nyc 70s flicks like this as a rule and brolin was genuinely awesome. not sure i can stand by any other praise i had upthread, though it doesn't seem like i could think of anything to praise even then.

I can't believe this tripe began the Oscar season as a contender.

we own the night was kinda ridic but so much better.

i mean AG didn't even try to do anything as cool as the car chase in WOTN

we own the night was kind of a piece of shit and so badly paced and the dumbest story/ending i've seen in ages but yeah there was some cool stuff and i wasn't ever bored

Just saw this, finally. Not on a par with the movies it wants to be ranked with, but I liked it a lot, don't regret the time spent.

^one for the sticker

this kind of sucks

we own the night was kind of a piece of shit and so badly paced and the dumbest story/ending i've seen in ages but yeah there was some cool stuff and i wasn't ever bored
― omar little, Friday, March 28, 2008 8:42 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

heh I remember being underwhelmed as hell by WOtN

yet We Own the Night is the better film

"and afterwards, lots more stuff that is way interesting than what you've seen here happened. THE END"

I miss slocki