It’s 1968 and Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) a Harlem drug Lord, is busy shipping 100 kilos of heroine into the US from Thailand. Then he’s smuggling cocaine in the coffins of Viet Nam vets. Next thing we know he’s built an empire just as Nixon proclaims, ‘The number one problem in America is drug abuse.” But along with his seedy drug-doings, Lucas is always promoting family, honesty and integrity. Denzel is good at playing a sophisticated gangster (although we’ve seen him be a crooked cop in “Training Day”). But it’s Cuba Gooding as a pimp-type club owner who really takes a leap. The problem is Russell Crowe, as the too-good-for-his-own-good detective Richie Roberts, who doesn’t transcend the part, and who’s got a bad 1970s haircut. He’s trying to bring down dirty cops, politicians and judges, all on Lucas’s payroll and his big moment doesn’t come from blood and guns, but instead a stare down in the movies’ final scene with Denzel. While the whole hip-hop element will attract a wider audience, the over-the-top intelligence that this story delivers (written by Steve “Schindler’s List” Zallian) will lose the “Scarface” cult in the dust (of the cocaine.) Two tiaras
