American Gangster

[MacGuffin]

Gross National Product: The Heroin Trade's New Face 
By JOHN LELAND; NY Times




HERE'S one measure of Harlem's gentrification: If you want the flavor of 116th Street in 1990, you now have to film 20 blocks north. So on a recent afternoon the crew of "American Gangster," which Ridley Scott is directing for release next fall, switched the signs on 136th Street, to the confusion of both pedestrians and traffic, and Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe headed for a street confrontation.

Mr. Washington plays a drug lord who rose to power in the 1970's; in this scene he was just out of prison. Mr. Crowe plays the investigator who brought him down and then became his friend. As they approached four glaring young men, Mr. Washington's character gave no ground. "Uh-oh," he said dismissively. "Look out. Here come the gangsters." Both parties stopped, scowled eye to eye, then walked on. It was a changing of the guard, one generation of American gangster giving way to the next.

This scene, which closes the movie, is an appropriate coda. As much as the film's heavies measure themselves against gangsters past and present, the movie will play against a long tradition of gangster pictures. The tradition is updated periodically, like science fiction movies or westerns, to reflect the anxieties of the moment. In the Depression, film gangsters like Paul Muni in "Scarface" evoked economic possibility and louche glamour; in the 1970's, with the "Godfather" movies, they stood for family values and honor in a corrupt world; in the 1990's, with "Goodfellas" and its ilk, they navigated the loss of empire. Tony Soprano adds the midlife anxieties of 21st-century suburban baby boomers, and, in recent weeks, "The Departed" played with the interchangeability of good guys and bad.

In "American Gangster," which is based on the real-life heroin kingpin Frank Lucas and the detective-turned-prosecutor Richie Roberts, the themes are strictly corporate business.

"I saw it as a story about American business and race," said Steven Zaillian, the principal scriptwriter, who also wrote "Schindler's List" and more recently wrote and directed "All the King's Men," starring Sean Penn. "If you substitute any other product for heroin, it'd be clear. It wasn't the idea of doing a dope story so much as: What happens when a black businessman takes over an industry? It becomes something that's not going to be allowed to continue. Frank became bigger than the Mafia and took over their business in a way that made it difficult for him to stay in business."

In an industry that has often whitewashed racial differences, gangster movies, like westerns, provide a sexy, impolitic showcase for ethnic conflict and tribalism. Westerns typically reaffirm the white majority, both morally and militarily, but in gangster movies the lines of pride, righteousness and power are more complicated. In a nation of immigrants, the movies pit audience sympathy for the new immigrant against fear of the unassimilated ethnic clan. They are epics of nonassimilation: no one is more Italian than an Italian Mafioso and his kin.

The successive screen mobs — Irish, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Cuban or African-American — all practice strict (and interchangeable) moral codes and family values. Yet each is eventually threatened by ascendant newcomers, who make their codes seem not pure but old-fashioned, flabby. In the ethnic drama of the gangster picture, assimilation becomes a fatal decadence: as the immigrant group becomes more like the dominant culture, it loses its strength. Even as the movies embrace their minorities, they do not let them transcend their difference. And in the end, of course, someone rats; justice wins out.

"American Gangster" passes the drug trade, which divided the Corleone family in "The Godfather," from the Italian-American mob to Frank Lucas, who imagines it as a sleek global supply chain running from Vietnam to Harlem. Brian Grazer, one of the film's producers, saw it as a parable about business in the age of Enron.

"My opinion is the movie is a metaphor for white-collar greed and crime," Mr. Grazer said, bouncing around in a trailer on Riverside Drive. "In the end, how different is what Frank Lucas does than a junk-bond dealer?"

How deeply the movie will develop these themes is anyone's guess. But it is unlikely that the makers of "Scarface," "Public Enemy No. 1" or "A Bronx Tale" would have discussed their protagonists in the language of market share and hostile takeover.

Among Harlem drug lords, Frank Lucas was less celebrated than Nicky Barnes, but his rise and fall as a businessman, chronicled in a 2000 New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson that inspired the movie, is as American as Horatio Alger. Raised poor in rural North Carolina, he came to New York and modernized the heroin trade, importing directly from Southeast Asia — often in military planes with the help of military brass, and sometimes in the caskets of dead soldiers. In the process he bucked the control of the Italian Mafia, which often treated African-Americans as underlings. He improved the product, the supply chain and the organizational structure, amassing a fortune he once estimated at $52 million in cash. He went to prison for 15 years before giving testimony that led to more than 100 arrests, said Mr. Roberts, who now has a private criminal law practice, with Mr. Lucas as a friend and client.

"These drug guys, then and now, were brutal," Mr. Roberts said. "He was, too. But he was smart. There was something about him I liked. I hate to admit it." He added: "Some say he's a rat because he cooperated. Baloney. He did the smart thing. He did tremendous harm, but then tremendous good."

What fascinated Mr. Scott, though, were not just Mr. Lucas's entrepreneurial courage but also his values, especially compared with those of the police and prosecutors, including Mr. Roberts, who is portrayed in the movie as a womanizer.

"It's about the paradox of what their private life was like and their work life," Mr. Scott said between shots on another afternoon. "They're reversals on each other. One is personally ethical, yet his business is highly debatable, i.e., heroin. And yet his ethics about his business as a process and procedure are so meticulous that it can almost be respected."

Speaking of Mr. Roberts, he continued: "And the other character is again a paradox of opposites. His personal life is all to hell, and yet he's a hound dog and fervently honest. He was infamous within the Police Department for having returned a million dollars of probably drug money, which he found in the trunk of a car, instantly making him untrustworthy within the Police Department. So already you have this confusion of ethics."

Mr. Scott, who has made movies that advertise their genres in their titles before, including "Alien" and "Gladiator," said that to set a mood before filming, he studied "The French Connection" and "Prince of the City." He described "American Gangster" as less a genre film than a documentary, but did not complete the thought.

"I like to think in terms of a grand generic notion of an American gangster, as opposed to the American gangster," he said. "Because there are too many famous and infamous American gangsters over the last century. The notion of 'American Gangster' is almost like a new evolution of the adjustment of change. Change in this instance cost the Mafia the main precedence at the time, because they were having to buy the idea of progress in the idea of a black businessman." (Somehow, when he talked to actors and his four camera teams, they seemed to follow him without decryption devices.)

"American Gangster" enters production with a troubled history. In 2004, with Antoine Fuqua directing and Mr. Washington and Benicio Del Toro in the lead roles, Universal Studios scrapped the movie less than a month before the scheduled start of filming, absorbing a loss reported at $30 million. Terry George, director of "Hotel Rwanda," rewrote the script and began a cheaper version last year, before Mr. Grazer started again with Mr. Scott and a new cast.

Mr. Grazer said he had begun to think the movie was cursed because its protagonist was so evil that he was not meant to be popularized.

Mr. Washington, too, said he had wrestled with the question of whether it was appropriate to give the Hollywood treatment to someone whose chief accomplishment was bringing more heroin to more people. Unlike Mr. Grazer, who cites the first two "Godfather" movies as his favorite films, Mr. Washington said he was never a big fan of gangster movies. "I thought, 'Why should I want to play this dope dealer?' "

But he said he took comfort in the biblical passage "There is no peace, saith the Lord, for the wicked," which he wrote on his script. "This guy gets to a certain place, and one thing after another after another in our script starts happening to him," Mr. Washington said. "His body turns on him. He gets shot. The life of crime — he pays the price in a lot of ways. Some would say not enough, obviously.

"When I met Frank, I really understood what I saw as the arc of the character. He wears nice clothes and drives fancy cars and all that, so if that means glorifying it I guess that's the case. But for me I was looking at the arc of the character, and he don't look that glorious right now."

On the Harlem set, Vicky Gholson, a local resident and community board member, said that without Mr. Washington she might have worried that "American Gangster" would repeat the sins of the blaxploitation films of the 1970's. But, she added: "The mere fact that Denzel is starring in it offsets any mixed feelings I might have of glorifying a drug dealer. This community has a legacy of gangsterism and entertainment, and this movie shows both."

The street scene was not feeling right. The young hoodlums looked like actors in Timberlands and hoodies, not real thugs. The rap figure Fab Five Freddy, a consultant, advised them on their swagger. They were moving away too fast, he said. Real bad boys savor the confrontation.

Mr. Roberts, who said he had not read the entire script, said he hoped the movie was straightforward and not glamorized, but he was already feeling the distorting effects of Hollywood. With Russell Crowe portraying him, he admitted, his girlfriend looks at him differently.

Mr. Crowe said he saw the film in simple terms. "In a slightly ironic way, black businessman with $250 million in the bank who sells heroin" and sleeps with Miss Puerto Rico, "that's great cinema," he said. "There's a responsibility that goes with that as well, to bring that guy to justice. We'll see how we do with that."

Mr. Scott brought the actors and cameras back to position for another take. The young hoodlums slowed down, extending the moment. Mr. Scott was satisfied. The new American gangsters had arrived.

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: November 2nd, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Dania Ramirez, Josh Brolin, Carla Gugino 

Directed by: Ridley Scott

Premise: A drug lord smuggles heroin into Harlem during the 1970s by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam.

[pete]

oops, they forgot to dress common up.

[grand theft sparrow]

HA!  Seriously.  Maybe he got the job because they knew he'd save them a few grand in wardrobe expenses.

I don't know.  Maybe I'm just a sucker for 70s period pieces but it looks like Ridley Scott has actually made an undisputable great film for the first time in ages here.  But because of Denzel, I keep thinking that Spike should have made this.  But I can't complain because this is the first Ridley film that I'm excited about since before I was underwhelmed by Gladiator.  Too bad for him that, if it is great, he still won't win the Oscar for Best Director because it's too soon after The Departed for another gangster flick to win big.

[Kal]

I'm looking forward to this... the trailer sucks but I think it can be good. I like Ridley Scott and most of the cast, and I always like this type of movies.

[clerkguy23]

harris savides is the dp, so that alone makes me want to see it

[MacGuffin]

New Trailer here.

[MacGuffin]

Truth, with consequences
Denzel Washington took the role of 'American Gangster's' real-life drug kingpin with an understanding: The bad guy had to be punished.
Source: Los Angeles Times

AS a teenager visiting Harlem, Denzel Washington never came across drug lord Frank Lucas in person. But Washington certainly saw the human wreckage that Lucas helped create, especially along 116th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues. "There were junkies everywhere," Washington says. "The neighborhood was destroyed by people like Frank Lucas." To lay waste to so many lives, Lucas had to have possessed incredible power. His ascension as an unrivaled heroin dealer -- and his subsequent downfall as a police snitch who lost everything -- lies at the heart of "American Gangster," which arrives Nov. 2 after several false starts. Starring Washington as Lucas and Russell Crowe as Det. Richie Roberts, the Ridley Scott-directed film is as much old-fashioned western as "Scarface" crime drama. Lucas has made Harlem an outlaw town, and his protectors and accomplices include both the local police and the U.S. military. Roberts is the overmatched but idealistic sheriff who wants to reestablish law and order and send the bad guys packing.

But "American Gangster" is also a portrait of an era. Steven Zaillian's screenplay, which formerly was going to be directed by Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day") and then by Terry George ("Hotel Rwanda"), manages to weave together Vietnam, the civil rights movement, modern-day empire building and the emergence of gangsta style. The film's entrepreneurs are just like Tom Wolfe's Masters of the Universe, but rather than selling municipal bonds, they're peddling heroin called Blue Magic.
 
And it's all inspired by a true story.

As chronicled in a 2000 New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson that served as the rough basis for the film, Lucas was a poorly educated North Carolina kid who came to New York mainly to escape his petty-criminal past. Before long, Lucas was driving the notorious African American crime boss Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson around Harlem. Lucas learned at the feet of a legend, and when Johnson died, Lucas didn't just fill his mentor's shoes, he took his business global.

By buying and importing heroin directly from Thailand, Burma and Laos (with some shipments smuggled inside American soldiers' coffins returning from Vietnam), Lucas was able to generate staggering profits -- pocketing as much as $1 million a day.

"I just thought the story was unique -- that a semiliterate guy from North Carolina could go to Southeast Asia and navigate his way through that world," says "American Gangster" producer Brian Grazer. "He was so elusive. What he did blew my mind."

Lucas' story also impressed Washington, but he turned down a chance to make it several times -- until Fuqua came on board. "When Antoine came on, I said yes," Washington says.

Fuqua had directed Washington to his best actor Oscar in "Training Day," and the two decided to reunite on "American Gangster." But with Fuqua just weeks from filming in 2004, Universal Pictures grew nervous about the film's budget and Fuqua's revisions. Even as sets were built and cast and crew hired, the studio pulled "American Gangster's" plug.

"The movie Steve Zaillian wrote was more epic in scope than the movie Antoine wanted to make," says Marc Shmuger, Universal's chairman. Fuqua says he wanted his movie to be both epic and character-driven: "I wish the best for the movie, because it's got some of the best talent in the business," the director says. "I'm sure I didn't do everything right, but I'm also sure I didn't do everything wrong."

George subsequently reworked the script for his "Hotel Rwanda" star Don Cheadle, but Universal feared that version missed the project's potential too. Then Scott came into the picture and rang up Washington.

"He's without question the No. 1 black actor," says Scott, the director of "Gladiator" and "Black Hawk Down." "Denzel can hold the stage -- whether it's on Broadway or in a movie --and he's always slightly beyond his material. He elevates everything he's doing."

'The ultimate pragmatist'

WASHINGTON was interested but wanted to know what version of the movie Scott planned on making.

"Denzel is the ultimate pragmatist," Scott says. "He laughed and said, 'You're the third one up. What's your story?' " When Scott told him he wanted to revert to Zaillian's original script, Washington was back in.

Washington, who is typically seen playing crusading winners in movies such as "Remember the Titans" and "Inside Man," likes playing the occasional baddie. "You can say anything, you can do anything. Bad guys are fun," he says.

But there was much more to Lucas than a one-dimensional villain. "He wasn't well educated, but you see how intelligent Frank is -- I mean street smart," says Washington, who spent considerable time with Lucas during filming and describes him now as a "small, broken man, out of his element."

"He took an extremely risky chance going all the way to Southeast Asia. And it took him a couple of months to make a connection," Washington says, noting that the time is compressed in the movie. "He was running a Fortune 500 company from the street."

And even though Lucas was a heroin-dealing killer, he nevertheless followed his own strong code of values, demanding honesty from his employees, respecting and protecting his extended family. "You kind of like him," Scott says, "even though what he does is awful. Steve Zaillian kept saying to me, 'You cannot make a person like this heroic.' I said, 'I know, but my job is to make him sympathetic.' "

Zaillian wasn't the only one concerned.

In "Training Day," Washington had pushed Fuqua to depict more graphically the downfall of Washington's profane and dirty cop, Alonzo, rather than just refer to an off-screen demise.

"In order to justify his living in the worst possible way, you had to see him dying in the worst possible way," Washington says. That climactic "Training Day" scene -- anchored by Washington's memorable "King Kong ain't got ... on me" monologue -- not only reshaped the movie but also likely clinched the actor's Academy Award.

With "American Gangster," Washington made a similar argument.

"Denzel would not do the role unless there were consequences," Grazer says. "He said, 'I can play a drug dealer, but only if the character is punished.' "

The real-life Lucas would stay in the game too long, get caught, go to jail and lose his ill-gotten gains. "We had to see him pay," Washington says. "I like to think I have a moral compass. I don't want to play a bad guy just for the sake of it. There have to be moral consequences."

Washington nevertheless worries that some people may see Lucas as more role model than cautionary tale. "Absolutely, I'm concerned about that."

He also pushed for the inclusion of a story Lucas told him -- "It was the only time I saw him cry," the actor says of the gangster -- that Washington believed helped explain his turn toward crime: When Lucas was only 6 or so, a teenage cousin, suspected of looking at a white girl the wrong way, was shot to death by a band of North Carolina men.

"We don't see it in the movie; he just talks about it," Washington says. "But that's when he turned."

Once a crime boss, Lucas is eventually undone not only by Roberts' dogged pursuit but also by his own pride.

"It's a cliché, but it's true. Frank said to me, 'Denzel, I should have gotten out. I had enough money. I tried to retire and went down to my farm. But it was the life,' " says Washington, who recently completed directing and costarring in "The Great Debaters," a fact-based movie about a small black college taking on Harvard in a 1930 debate contest.

"It's like boxers who get back in the ring, even though they shouldn't, and get their brains knocked out," Washington says. "They need the high -- no pun intended."

[MacGuffin]

EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW: SIR RIDLEY SCOTT (AMERICAN GANGSTER)
Source: CHUD

I don't normally take phone calls at 7:50 AM on a Saturday (not even, no, especially not from my mom), but I will always make an exception for Sir Ridley Scott. He could call me at 7:50 AM every Saturday for the next three years, and I don't think I'd complain. He might get awfully well-acquainted with my voice mail after a while, but, hey, a little phone harassment is a more-than-fair trade off for Alien, Blade Runner, Legend, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down, Matchstick Men, Kingdom of Heaven and, now, American Gangster.

The dovetailing story of Frank Lucas (a 1970s Harlem drug dealer who cut out the middle men - i.e. the Italians - by arranging for pure heroin to be shipped in from Vietnam in the coffins of American dead) and Richie Roberts (the New Jersey detective who tracked Lucas down), American Gangster does for its titular genre what Clint Eastwood did to the western with Unforgiven. Seventy-six years after Mervyn LeRoy's Little Caesar, it's about time someone tore the gangster film apart and reconsidered its conventions while questioning the popularity of the kingpin mythos that's dominated hip-hop culture since, I don't know, N.W.A. dropped "Dope Man" ("Young brother gettin' over by slangin' cane)? Audiences paying to see the ne plus ultra of gangster flicks may emerge confused (especially with the mixed-signal release of Jay-Z's American Gangster LP), but Steven Zaillian's remarkably nuanced screenplay will out. Regardless of its intent, the story is just too absorbing.

The narrative is so strong that Scott, one of cinema's supreme stylists, has opted for a muted visual palette in order to de-emphasize the glitz that often bedecks the gangsta film (it's a trickle-down effect flowing from Brian De Palma's Scarface to rubbish like State Property). But, as the master filmmaker notes in the below interview, the lack of ostentation is also in keeping with the New York City of that era; though some folks stepped out in natty attire, they were the exception to the rule. They were also targets; a chinchilla coat and primo seats at Ali-Frazier II meant you were either a celebrity or connected. And if you were the latter, you were fucked.

It was 10:50 AM in New York City for Ridley - who'd just flown in from Morocco where he's directing Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe in Body of Lies - when we chatted, and he was in great spirits. And why shouldn't he be? American Gangster is a masterpiece, the final cut of Blade Runner is selling out theaters in re-release, and he's got a shot at Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian provided he can secure the requisite financing (which won't be a problem when AG breaks $100 million in two weeks' time).

This was the first time I'd spoken with Ridley since moderating a Q&A for the Director's Cut of Kingdom of Heaven. I'm not sure he remembered me, but he was friendly nonetheless.


Q: In practical terms, you've adapted your visual style to the environment of New York City by shooting Super 35 for 1.85:1.

Ridley Scott: I spent a lot of time in New York City during the '60s, so I knew it well, including Harlem. And I relate very strongly to some of the photography of that period. So when Harris [Savides] and I talked about whether we should shoot wide, we decided we were better off at 1.85, which is probably the closest thing that would be appropriate for this kind of story. It's almost like a still photograph.

Q: Framing-wise, did this have to do anything with the height of the buildings?

Scott: I never have that problem. There's always the argument that if you letterbox, you're going to see less "up". I'm not one for big masters. I never have been. I learned to get rid of that when I was doing millions of commercials, knowing that, during the scene, there will be an opportunity to gradually reveal what is the environment, what is the room, what are the surroundings. You won't miss anything. And it will be in this more powerful form rather than jumping back to one wide shot - which really doesn't do anything and has no reason to be there.

Q: The other aspect of American Gangster that I think is different from your previous films is the way you de-emphasize the glamour of this obscenely glamourous world - which is, of course, one of the film's central themes. Why play down what every other director would play up?

Scott: I went through it. I rubbed shoulders with... if not necessarily drug dealers throughout the 1960s, certainly people who were close to that. So I was able to sort out who was really well-dressed and who was shabby. I think for the most part, even in the period from '69 to '74, there wasn't a lot of money around, not like there is today. There were still the monied few, but, for the most part, it was a kind of reined-back visual experience. Even in the streets, which were always what I called "cinder, toffee, brown and black". That's what I always thought about New York. New York light is very harsh, but harsh in a good way. It was very well-captured by a very good fashion photographer named William Klein*. He did three books: one on Manhattan, one on Tokyo and one on Rome. He brought fashion onto the streets, and gave it a different look, a very strong, aggressive, fashion-y look. He used people on the streets, and he used the backgrounds. He loved 42nd Street, which, in those days, was really grim.

Q: Streets like that, and atmosphere like that, have, of course, been almost completely driven out of the city.

Scott: I've always felt Times Square was grim. (Laughs) Now, it's smothered in millions of electronic signs, so a lot of the shabbiness is hidden. But that was part of the charm, part of the power of New York; it was that sense of a city always on overload. It always looks like it needs refurbishing. And, yet, the modern cities, when they start from scratch, such as Hong Kong and Shanghai, they're very crisp; they've been designed for the future. New York is largely about trying to hold onto the beauty of the buildings of the twenties and thirties; the rest is retro-ing, and then trying to shoehorn in there some really seriously good pieces of new architecture - of which there aren't many, surprisingly. In fact, I can't think of any that are really good.

Q: No Frank Lloyd Wright, no Gehry...

Scott: No. No serious architecture for a while. But when you go to Holland and Germany and Berlin and Shanghai and Hong Kong and, now, even London, you see some pretty damn good stuff.

Q: But the Harlem of the '60s and '70s has still changed dramatically. I know you did a lot of location shooting in the city; how did you find places and buildings and neighborhoods that would evoke this era?

Scott: It was a lot of looking. The Harlem that exists today is starting to get into $3 million to $5 million brownstone houses. (Laughs) So it was a lot of trying to find those spots that had not been touched. I just went round and round with a small unit of location scouts. We chose one center of the universe, which was the narrowest street in Harlem. But that became secondary - and it was the corner on which Frank Lucas and Bumpy Johnson handed out turkeys. But we got there, and I thought "This street is too small." Harlem was basically known for it's boulevards, so we ended up on one of the widest boulevards. Then I said, "I don't have a coffee shop. I need a coffee shop." So we built that coffee shop [which Lucas frequents in the film]; that was a set. I built that on site, on the spot, on the best crossroads.

Q: Building onto a preexisting building?

Scott: Actually, it was a old, ruined corner store. So we just went in there, tore it apart, and glommed a cafe onto it. And because the sidewalks there are so wide, we brought the glassed area onto the sidewalk - which they used to do sometimes.

Q: And you only spent a week in Thailand?

Scott: Yeah! I shot for only a week. We went in there, I did a two-day turnaround, and then just shot. Honestly, you get so experienced at it; I can tell from location pictures how to position the set according to the sun, and according to where I'm going to shoot at that time of day. That factory was a set. We built that, too.

Q: And the poppies?

Scott: We put those in digitally. Pretty good, actually. You choose whether you want white, pink and white, or red. I went for the white because it looked more unusual.

Q: Getting back to the de-emphasized glamour of American Gangster, this approach is contrary to what most people expect from gangster films - especially when then see big names like Denzel and Russell on the poster. There are expectations, and, for modern audiences, they're grounded in films like Scarface and Goodfellas. Though you were reflecting the world you recalled from the '60s and '70s, was there still a sense of commenting on where we are with this genre?

Scott: Yeah. I think what made me give the big pause [prior to taking the gig], even with Zailian writing, was that I thought, "Eh... drug dealer, Harlem... do I really want to do this?" I hesitated because I felt it had been done. But then I reappraised it over a couple of years, and wondered what the hell had happened to the film. It hadn't been made. So I called up Steven, and he gave me the two evolutions it went through - albeit, this was quietly done. Then I talked to Russell about it, called Brian and said, "Let's try and do it." That's how it happened. And I went back to the original notion of what Zaillian had written.

Q: And then you have the challenge of balancing the story between two of the most overpoweringly brilliant actors working today. You do a great job of juxtaposing their personalities, but when you finally bring them together... how do you keep that interrogation scene from overwhelming the entire movie?

Scott: It's one of the scenes that worried me the most. It's a nine-page talking scene. And nine-page talking scenes, when you get to the end of a movie, are not what you want, right? (Laughs) Except this was so beautifully laid out in terms of its dynamics, in terms of the question and answer of what would happen. So Frank amusingly revisits some old ground, and asks [Richie] the inevitable question: "Is it true that you actually gave back $1 million?" Then you begin with corruption; you begin with Frank Lucas trying to bribe him. It was always on paper, and I think for that reason, with those two, I wasn't afraid of it. I thought it would be just fine. And, ironically, it works out as being one of the best scenes in the movie.

Q: It's spectacular. And I love the little touches, like the cup of coffee being nudged back and forth.

Scott: That just happened. Denzel swatted the coffee off the table. It comes off Richie's line, "And everything can return to normal." Denzel starts to talk about what he means by "normal", and he literally lost it; he got enraged and swatted the coffee. I thought that was pretty cool, so I just let it run. It's only going to happen once; you can't predesign these things. If it happens, it happens, and that's great because you know it's real. Then Russell, during the right moment, decided during the take - because I was running four cameras on them - to push the coffee back as is to say, "The ball's in your court." Denzel didn't immediately use that. I was waiting for him to slide it back. And then he chose the right moment to slide it back. That all happened spur of the moment.

Q: Great as Denzel and Russell are, they also get to play off an amazing supporting cast. Josh Brolin, Armand Assante, Chiwetel Ejiofor--

Scott: There are some great characters in this. And I was really thrilled that they wanted to do it - particularly Chiwetel, because it's not a big part. But he said, "No, I want to do it. I love the character, I love the idea, and I love the film." And Josh had five great, really telling scenes, didn't he?

Q: Yeah. He's had a phenomenal year. I've seen him in three movies this year, and he's been amazing in all three.

Scott: He's really coming of age.

Q: One quality that has become your signature as a filmmaker is the creating of worlds. Stretching back to Alien and Blade Runner and even The Duellists, I think of the art design and real locations and things that are hand-crafted, not CG-ed in later. Now that you have CG at your disposal, do you find it's more difficult to achieve this kind of immersion?

Scott: I think with CG that you've got to be very careful, because CG starts to look like CG. With CG, less is more. You've got to know when to hold back. When you see an over-elaborated, over-painted shot that looks real - even though you know it's not real - because it's so complete and so what I call "postcard-y", then you know there's something fake about it. A lot of films suffer from that. There's very little CGI in American Gangster.

Q: I also want to congratulate you on the final cut of Blade Runner. It's been playing to packed houses, even on weeknights, here in Los Angeles. Are there plans to roll it out wider?

Scott: There are. They had a four-screen show-and-tell in the States about a month ago, and we were running at the highest per-screen average of that weekend. So that got them to get their heads out, and now we're going to start a limited release in something like twenty theaters. We'll see how it goes.

Q: That's the way the film has to be seen, I think.

Scott: Yeah, I'm very happy with it.

Q: Would you say that you've changed the way you pace a film between Alien and American Gangster?

Scott: It's horses-for-courses. You're driven by the material rather than pre-deciding "This film should be quicker." I think the audience certainly has less tolerance. It's kind of a TV audience now, isn't it? This sadly effects the kinds of movies that are successful, and, because they are successful, there are more made like that. I'm being fairly negative, but... there's a lot of shit out there, put it that way.

Q: I only ask because watching the beginning of Alien the other night, I remembered something you said on one of the commentary tracks. The note you kept getting back from the studio was that "Nothing happens for the first forty-five minutes."

Scott: Right.

Q: I can't imagine anyone making a major studio film nowadays trying to get away with a opening like that. Same with Blade Runner.

Scott: They have their own cadence and pace. My argument [with Alien] was that once you get to the point where John [Hurt] lowers himself into that chamber, I think you're pretty distressed. So I think the forty-five minutes was pretty well invested. I always said that when that egg opens, then you know you're in for a different kind of experience.

Q: How have things been going in Morocco with Body of Lies? You've shot over there once or twice before, right?

Scott: This will be my fourth time. I'm halfway through. It's with Leo and Russell, and Russell's already done, actually. He's mostly in Washington. It's a Washington film, it's a Middle East film, and that's where the usual conventions stop. It's a rather excellent story told by David Ignatius's book. The book is called Body of Lies, but I'm not sure that's going to be the title. I preferred his earlier title, which was Penetration. It's a metaphor, obviously, for what has happened and what is happening. And really trying to distill not what we should have done, but what we should do, and is there any hope on the horizon for dealing with the problem. At the moment, there really isn't. And that's not negative, but realistic, right? Leo plays a [CIA agent] in the field, and Russell plays a person who, fundamentally, is his boss. It's a little John le Carré, and I'm really happy with it so far.

You know, David Ignatius is something of an old hand with the Middle East. I think it's been his main subject for the last thirty years. He's the foreign correspondent for The Washington Post.

Q: That's good. It's so important to be telling these stories from the point-of-view of the people who've been studying and living the subject.

Scott: You better get it right. You can't be jingoistic today. And this is not jingoistic, but self-critical. It's looking inwards. It's the idea that, in our arrogance, we believe we're the actual enemy, when we're not. The enemy is within on that side of the world, and their first priority is cleaning up their religion. That's the fundamentalist overview of [the Muslim] religion; they feel like there are too many people who aren't thinking as they'd like them to think. So the first priority is to get that all straightened out. (Pause) And that's when we'll really be in trouble.

Q: (Laughing) And that's not being negative. That's being realistic.

Scott: I think so. (Laughs)

Q: Beyond that, we've heard about Nottingham and Russell playing the Sheriff. Is that--

Scott: He's not the Sheriff in a way. He begins the film being called "Nottingham". He's kind of, if you like, the right-hand man to Richard Coeur de Leon. It begins with the return from the Crusades, where they've lost a whole generation going down to this religious fervor without really realizing why they're there. Richard Coeur de Leon was an interesting character in that he was more of a figment of good publicity than reality. He never really won anything. But he was a great figure on a horse with armor.

Q: It sounds like maybe this could be a companion piece to Kingdom of Heaven.

Scott: No, no. I would say it's less serious than that.

Q: And now that the Cormac McCarthy thing might finally be happening in film, are you still interested in directing Blood Meridian?

Scott: It's a hard one to push forward. As soon as you start to explain the "why" of the violence, then there's no reason to make the film. It is an exercise in evolution, I think, and no more than that. There was a time when the scalp hunters went out, and there was a clear attempt at genocide, to wipe out a group who was a nuisance down there. And the bounty hunters were paid quite substantially for one scalp. So it's really about that group. And the "why" is a very straight answer. I believe they were getting as much as $100 a scalp... and they discovered that, honestly, one dark mane was as much the same as another, so they were just scalping indiscriminately eventually. It's about the end and the turning point for the American Indian, but it's a pocket in that time - and it's a hard one because it's a wonderful read, and I think it should be kept that way. When one makes a film, you've got to make it like the read. And [Blood Meridian] is nearly an abstract. That's hard. And suddenly, because movies cost a lot to make, you've got to do it as a low-budget movie.

Q: That might force you to be an even more impressionistic filmmaker.

Scott: It's harder. You want to hit the seasons, you need back-up, you need violence to do it properly... and some really careful, diligent shooting. It all rolls into the fact that it's not a low-budget movie, not if you want to do the book justice. It's like saying I can do Apocalypse Now cheaply. You'll end up with the TV version.

Q: Films like that require so many days of shooting.

Scott: Yeah!

Q: But the studios are always trying to bring them in at ninety days. Lawrence of Arabia doesn't happen in ninety days.

Scott: And there's always a reason why. With Lawrence, if you're in Jordan, once the sun comes up you can't really shoot two hours after sunrise. And you don't really want to shoot until two hours [until sunset]. So the rest of the day you sit around waiting for the sun to go down. If you don't hit the right time of the year, and [David Lean] didn't want to be in the right time of the year for some reason, you're staring at 132 degrees. You can't work in that.


At this point, I was a good fifteen minutes over my allotted time with Ridley. I could've gone on for another hour talking about Lawrence of Arabia with him, but that would just be selfish. I just hope there's some studio (or studios) out there willing to cough up the requisite cash to get Blood Meridian made.

For now, we have American Gangster, and for that we must be thankful. It opens wide on November 3rd.


*He also played "A Man from the Future" in Chris Marker's "La Jetée".

[MacGuffin]

Ridley Scott's American Gangster
Source: Edward Douglas; ComingSoon

In the thirty years that Sir Ridley Scott has been making movies, he's been building up an impressive filmography that always keeps his fans and critics guessing with the eclectic choices he makes about what to do next. From the sci-fi noir of Blade Runner to historic war epics like Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven and smaller character-driven pieces like Thelma and Louise and Matchstick Men.

Although some may have ruled Sir Ridley out after the poor showing for his last two films (at least in the United States), American Gangster returns Scott to more ambitious fare, although it's not quite as vast as something like Kingdom of Heaven or Black Hawk Down, it does have him recreating Harlem and New York City in the early '70s when Frank Lucas, played by Denzel Washington, ran the billion dollar drug trade that supplied heroin to all of Harlem and much of the Tri-State area. On the other side of the war on drugs is Richie Roberts, played by Russell Crowe appearing in his third film with Scott, a hard-nosed cop who leads the investigation into the burgeoning drug trade that leads him to Lucas and the pervasive police corruption in New York City.

ComingSoon.net attended a series of New York press conferences for the movie, kicking off with Scott, who had a long night at the film's premiere at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater the night before, having come straight from filming his next movie Body of Lies. As always, Scott is an endlessly fascinating speaker about any number of subjects, even when talking about himself.

ComingSoon.net: How was the reception to the movie at its Apollo Theatre premiere last night?
Scott: Generally, I think they really loved it actually. I was a little worried about doing the Apollo, because it's not a room, it's a theater, so balancing the sound and the picture and all the kind of thing is always tricky, but somebody did a really good job, so I think it went very well.

CS: There are two major stories running through the movie, Frank's story and that of Russell Crowe as Richie Roberts, so how did you as a director want to balance the two of them and what was the hardest part of making the movie?
Scott: Once it's on paper, I spend most of my life reading and developing material or on occasion, not often, a piece of material will arrive that I want to do. I get a lot of scripts sent, but for the most part, ninety-seven percent are not that good, but this one was from a friend of mine Steve Zaillian, who bunged this script at me I think four and a half years ago saying, "What do you think of this?" and he was a producer as well. I was off doing something else, but his material is always quite special, and it's really been distilled very well onto paper where he's thought about it. He's a very thoughtful, very sensitive writer. So honestly, once I got it and came on board with Brian (Grazer) I said, "At a hundred and sixty five pages, I'll sit with you and maybe it would be better for me to do my homework." I'll sit down with a yellow marker and go through a hundred and sixty five pages basically going, "I don't really need that, I don't really need that. I gotta have that." And marking in pink what I got to have. So what it does is, it informs me and makes me really, really address the movie because it's my job particularly once you get successful, it's very easy just to take a script and say, "Yeah, I'll cast him and her," and then you zoom into it and say, "I can do it from this hotel room." But this needs way too much thought, and when you get a great piece of work like Steve can put on paper, you have to address it really carefully. It makes you organically feel the dynamics of the film, and once I know that it's in my head. Once I've done my homework--providing he's agreed with that and said, "Well, I agree with that, I don't agree with this"--so there's a bit of a give and take and then you actually have it in your head. When I begin I actually have it right here, I virtually don't need a storyboard.

CS: What about the dynamic between the two actors?
Scott: That's the most attractive thing about it. One, they will never meet each other until about fifteen minutes from the end. That's really a big challenge and very unusual. Unusual is good. There's nothing really usual about this movie, and also the unusual side of the two universes of two characters where you can really question, "Do we really need Richie's wife? Do we really need the fact that he's getting divorced? Do we really need the fact that he's got a dysfunctional private life? Do we really need the fact that Frank Lucas family comes?" All those things, yeah you have to have it all because these two people are going to function basically by themselves as two leading characters where they haven't got each other to play off. That isn't going to happen until twenty minutes from the end. So from my point of view and the balancing act I have to do, I've got to make each universe so rich so you are very satisfied to sit there and watch that section evolve and move on, then counteract and counter cut with suddenly, you are going from Frank going to Vietnam and you suddenly cut to a park and see a guy walking his wife and kid and he's got a rovingeye, and he's being told that he hasn't got any room in their life. That's a great dynamic. So you're going that way and suddenly you are going that way. That makes you pay attention.

CS: What about the two actors? Was it very different Working with Denzel and Russell?
Scott: When you're that good, it's a bit like playing tennis. Roger Federer is Roger Federer. You get both of them on the bloody court, you never quite know who is going to win. They're consummate actors and at the absolute peak of their career, so it's very similar working with them in that sense because it's that level.

CS: How did the script change once you came on board from the earlier version which was supposed to be directed by Antoine Fuqua?
Scott: I wasn't involved (back then). I was handed it five years ago. I wanted to make it two movies and in that time, it dawned on me this hadn't been made and I hadn't been tracking it of course. I was then working with Russell in France and I said to him, "Did you ever read "American Gangster"? He said, "Yeah, Brian had sent it to me with a view to me being Richie, but there wasn't really enough there." I said, "It was good though" and he said, "Well, yeah there was something there definitely," but he said, "I want to play Frank Lucas." And I said, "Well you can't." (laughter) He said, "Why not?" and I said, "Come on Russell." So I then called Brian saying, "Listen I think we can get lift-off here and we should go back to Denzel." Brian did that and I think Denzel laughed and said, "Oh no, not again." I then read three versions just in case, so there was Steve Zaillian at 165 pages, actually 170 pages when I read it. There was Terry George who had come in and redid it his way; he kept not a lot of the original, and then there was Richard Price who came in writing I believe, it must have been for Denzel and Antoine. That was the way it was. I read all three and honestly in a nutshell, straight back to the original. I said, "This is the one I'm interested in."

CS: Did you deliberately try to shoot the movie in a specific order as far as trying to shoot Russell's stuff first or Denzel's stuff first?
Scott: No, that comes down to availability, so there's no intellectual choice in that. It's just who's going to be ready to do this and who is the most practical of doing this first? Because Russell essentially had... actually he's on the screen eight minutes less than Denzel, so when somebody said, "You know. He's awfully good. He's actually really, really, really good, but he's on screen a lot." I said, "There's eight minutes difference actually."

CS: Did you have the real Frank Lucas' permission to make the movie?
Scott: Yeah, absolutely. Do you think Frank didn't want this movie made? Oh, yes he did.

CS: Did you get to spend any time talking to him?
Scott: Sure. I mean, I was going to meet with Frank because Denzel said, "You've got to meet with Frank." Frank Lucas came to my office in New York. I thought it would be for a half hour cup of coffee. Five and a half hours later and two bottles of red wine—and I thought he didn't drink, Jesus Christ--and we really got to actually talk about Westerns and how he wanted to be in a Western. I said I'll have him in a Western, so that went pretty well.

CS: What was the most interesting thing you found about Frank?
Scott: The fact that he's not a normal person. I'd say, "Any regrets? Any remorse? Were you ever afraid? When? For what reason? You're going to a war zone in Vietnam and worse you are going to go into the hills and you're going to meet Chinese drug lords who will cut your liver out, leave you to the ants and no one will ever hear from you again in three seconds. I would think that's much more dangerous than Harlem at that point." He said, "Never. Never even thought about it. I walk the streets. Where I am in the streets, that's the jungle. I wouldn't compare the jungle of Harlem with the edge of that world between war zones and Chinese poppy groves. I'd say I'd take Harlem any time." But he never thought about it.

CS: Did he have regrets about the drugs?
Scott: Never. As far as he's concerned that was their fault. That was their problem. He barely smoked, he didn't drink. I mean never, ever, ever even considered taking a drug.

CS: Would you consider him a sociopath?
Scott: Yeah, I think that's the best word for it and that entails... sociopath is not a pleasant description at all. Sounds cosmetic, but if you actually distill it, it's pretty lethal.

CS: Would Denzel agree with that?
Scott: Yeah, I think so, yeah.

CS: Your movies have had a very singular urban visualization, so how did you bring that to New York? Were there any specific touchstones?
Scott: I had the best touchstones when I was here. I came here on a travel scholarship in 1960. I got a job in a very menial form, even though I spent seven years in art school, got this great travel scholarship, I ended up making coffee and getting hamburgers for Don Pennebaker and Richie Leacock in a company of filmmakers called Drew Associates. I worked literally in the backroom literally syncing up rushes. Seven years of art school and I'm watching rushes. I'm watching drifting sink and what they called in those days was Nagra, the invention of crystal sync. You actually would eventually have no cables and I would watch rushes where I watch Jack Kennedy's rushes when he was doing primaries. When he won against Hubert Humphrey, I think it was Massachusetts. I also worked on a documentary called "Nehru" with Nehru who was the Prime Minister of India, and one on Eddie Sachs, an Indianapolis racecar driver and I was an assistant for a year. That's what got me interested in film; I must do film. I dropped design and went into film. I think I drifted off the question. What was the question? Ah, New York. (laughter) I do that. It's not my age. I get so engaged in what I'm talking about I go on tangents. I used to walk the streets of New York then because I have a very good eye and I had to invest in a really great camera with a fifty-millimeter lens and I spent days and days in Harlem, inside the Bowery and a lot of stuff on Coney Island, and so I got the smell of New York at that point. Then I started doing commercials very successfully and would come into New York at least once a month right through the '60s and '70s and '80s so I knew New York really well. Who dressed what, how they dressed. That's why you get that very reined-in view, because if people do a film about the '60s and '70s they think it's all like the Beatles. It's not like that. There wasn't that kind of money on the streets. So there were only the high-end elitists groups who might have been gangsters or might have been moneyed people, who would be able to dress like that. People would have the same suit for twenty years. It was much shabbier, so I reined it back and made it shabbier. I think that's what feels so real about it. Harlem was really, really shabby, beautiful brownstones falling apart.

CS: I understand you set a record for the number of locations on this movie, so can you talk about that?
Scott: One hundred and eighty locations is ludicrous. Thirty-five is reasonable. So there's about one hundred and eighty locations in five boroughs. Right now in the movie, I have about thirty-five or forty speaking parts and this is a hundred and thirty speaking parts so there's like millions of pieces of minutae, but that's what is so interesting about it. I think that's what could easily take a position as a talking movie, but somehow it's not. There's a lot of talking, but it doesn't feel like it's a talky talky movie because there's millions of bits of pops which all seem to be driving in the same direction.

CS: When you have 180 locations, where do you start?
Scott: Five boroughs. Yeah I'm in the five boroughs. In Harlem there may be fifty or sixty locations, so we'd be there this afternoon, there late afternoon, tomorrow morning we're going to be down there. I found several interiors that haven't been touched since the '40s. I just walked in and said, "Don't touch it" and they said, "But it's not healthy." and I said, "I don't care. Get masks" and we'd just shoot in the house.

CS: Were all of them actual locations?
Scott: Oh, yeah, everything in there is real. The only thing we built was his coffee shop. We built that. That doesn't exist. One of the toughest things about Harlem... people talk about Harlem perceived as a village, but it's not a village at all. It's an area of wide-avenued boulevards for the most part, and they're hard to shoot. It's hard to get an angle because you gotta a whole bunch of concrete pavement down the middle. Where there oughtta be trees that have been removed and didn't survive. That part of Manhattan was kind of always planned a little bit like Paris. If you think about the University up there now, which is now starting to look really posh. Parts of Harlem are starting to look very posh. If you had trees down that main boulevard it would be as wide as Paris, and there was none of that and that's hard to capture. I went to the most dense crossroads on that wide boulevard and I said, "We're going to build a cafe right here." Right next to the news agent, who's got a booth as big as this table. We pushed the café right against his booth. In fact, his booth had been there since the thirties, so it was a metal booth, one of those booths that's almost like a work of art. He was just tickled by that. So we just copied that booth and made a café.

CS: Was Frank Lucas on the set every day?
Scott: Every day.

CS: How was he received? Was anyone in Harlem bitter or angry about him being back on the streets there?
Scott: I don't know. I never heard anything about it. I thought there might be a problem at some point, but the closest angry person now might be twenty years ago. Nicky Barnes is probably a little pissed off.

CS: This movie seems to reveal a lot of dirty little secrets about the trade, so did you ever get the impression that the powers that be might not want to see this movie to come out?
Scott: Nah, I think the powers that be, they like to bathe in the limelight, don't they? That's what makes them tick, those guys. They don't care. They really don't care. So no, I never even gave it a second thought. Should I? Is there something I don't know? (laughter)

CS: There's a lot of attention right now on your entire filmography with the latest version of "Blade Runner" that you were involved with being released. Do you thing you've changed a lot since making that movie or do you feel that you've remained on a steady path?
Scott: The change comes in confidence, because when you first do a film, you don't get a lot of work. When I first did movies, I had done a lot of commercials and actually, I had an office here, an office in London, and an office in L.A. I was really flying in the business world, but I hadn't done a film. When I was thirty-nine I hadn't done a movie. So I thought I'd better think about it quick and so I started to use some of that money to find good writers and the first one up was "The Duelists". "The Duelists" experience was great because I was working long-form. It wasn't thirty seconds or sixty seconds. I really enjoyed it and it was kind of pretty easy. We did well with that because we went to Cannes and got the prize at Cannes, and then "Alien." That was pretty easy as well. This seemed to be easy, you know? I wasn't getting thrashed yet, and then I went to Hollywood, which was the first time I ever went to Hollywood as a director. I had done commercials, but it was the first time I was doing a studio film. Because I'm essentially not a kid, but metaphorically the "new kid on the block" there because I followed through with "Alien" which was last year's best good news. There was a lot of attention, and Hollywood people have a habit of bringing people to Hollywood on the admiration sled and then they actually try and turn it around to another hill and say, "Now we want you to do this." And you say, "But I don't do that." They've ruined more good potential people who don't stand their ground and get pushed down a hill they don't want to be on and they crash down in the trees at the bottom and never go back. I was too hardy. I was giving as good as I got, so I was very unpopular because I was used to running companies and I really didn't give a sh*t. All that matters was the movie. So at twenty five years old, I was right. My confidence at the time I was like definitely sitting in my apartment in Hollywood going, "Oh god, I don't like this." I was being beaten up a lot, and I think eventually what you do is you get that in its place, or otherwise you can't function. As a producer with a director, I'm like the best coach of looking at him in the morning and saying, "You're looking good" even though he looks like sh*t. "You're going to do good out there. You're going to be fantastic. We're going to fly through the day." As opposed to, I met with four guys in blue overcoats sitting in my trailer and say, "If you don't move quickly today we're just going to rip the scenes out." I thought this is not going to get the best out of people, so I got that into place so now I just chug along doing my own thing as much as possible, because I love to work hard. I came from a night shoot in Rabat 22 hours ago and I'll land at five am Monday morning, I'll get a shower and go to set with Leo DiCaprio. I've been shooting with him now for about seven weeks, so I'm nearly half way through in Morocco.

CS: Can you talk about that movie, "Body of Lies"?
Scott: David Ignatius, "Washington Post". Anyone know him? Foreign correspondent. So he wrote a book called... it's actually coming out or it's just been out called... the best title was "Penetration." His expertise and knowledge is thirty years in the Arab states and therefore that's really his thing, that's really his world. It's about what we haven't done, how we've f*cked up, how we've misunderstood everything and not they us, us them. It's a very good script. Bill Monahan wrote the script with Steve King coming in and doing some corrective stuff. So it's with Leo and Russell Crowe. Russell Crowe is done. I've shot with Russell for the last five weeks. That's why he's so sturdy looking at the moment. He's losing his weight. He was thirty pounds overweight to do the part.

[Stefen]

Has anyone DLed the screener of this that's out? I'm scared too after the oink thing. The MPAA has alot more pull than a few vigilantes who were upset they didn't get invited to a silly website.

[©brad]

were mod and i the only ones who saw this?

i enjoyed it, even if it offers nothing you haven't seen in the genre before. my main beef is surprisingly, at 2hrs 37mins, the movie feels short. every scene is rushed and leaves no room for the actors to breathe, making the characters seem one-dimensional. the movie barely scratches the surface of what seems to be the central theme - the duality of men (and again, nothing new). just when we get the slightest glimpse inside this devoted family man who has no issue with importing drugs and subsequently destroying his own people, or the womanizing cop with a strict moral code, scott immediately cuts away to something else, like he's trying to keep the talking in the movie to a minimum. a sopranos-esque character study this is not, but alas, it's entertaining enough.

[w/o horse]

Yeah I thought for sure there'd be a lot of discussion on this.

[diggler]

spoilers:



i found myself loving individual scenes, but as a whole it didn't feel very memorable. the climactic raid/shootout was terrific, albeit over quickly. The film was long but i wouldn't say it felt short, just... slight.

[pumba]

Totally held my attention for 2 1/2 hours, i liked the pacing between denzel and mr. crowe.
I hate the epilogue shit where they wrap everything up with a couple of sentences...
Anyhoo, this was awesome.