Review: "Enchanted" a royal treat


An animated Disney girl becomes a flesh-and-blood sweetheart
in this tongue-in-cheek homage to Disney fairy tales by Disney.

The first two-thirds of "Enchanted" is sweet, charming, almost-perfect, can't-wipe-the-smile-from-your-face fun. Simply put, it's endearing and, well, enchanting.

The movie works on a second level by lovingly evoking Disney's classic canon. "Enchanted" references everything from "Snow White" to "Beauty and the Beast," with gentle satire and sly references (pay attention to little details and character names). Helmer Kevin Lima ("Tarzan," "Enchanted") working with the script by Bill Kelly ("Blast From The Past"), takes traditional Disney fairytale animation and combines it with live action that forms a unique romantic comedy.

Narrated by Julie Andrews ("Mary Poppins"), the fun begins in the classically animated land of Andalasia. There we meet a young woman named Giselle
(Amy Adams, "Junebug"), a sweet innocent who, like Snow White, befriends woodland creatures; shares Belle's taste in gowns, and has Ariel's flowing red hair. She dances about her tree house and sings of a prince who will come and give her "true love's kiss." Her animal friends represent a Who's Who of Disney cartoon creature history: a chipmunk, blue birds, a baby deer, a gray rabbit, an owl, a warthog and more.

This sweet, idealistic beginning is basically a condensed all-too-familiar Disney classic. Giselle falls into danger when a six-storey green troll, drawn by her song, comes around to eat her and is saved by the brave, charming, and somewhat dim Prince Edward (James Marsden, "X-Men").
Having found in each other the one who completes their “heart’s duet,” Giselle and Edward finish the song about the magic of "True Love's Kiss", instantly fall in love and ride off to be "married in the morning!"

But not all is well. Queen Narissa (Susan Sarandon, "In the Valley of Elah"),
Edward's wicked stepmother, knows that if he marries, she will lose her throne forever. So Narissa, magically disguised as a crone in black hood and gown, dupes Giselle, on her wedding day, to make a wish at a magical fountain with a sparkling waterfall. As Giselle leans forward to make a wish -- of course, to live happily ever after with her prince -- the crone gives her a shove and the would be princess falls into the fountain and lands in a place "where there are no happily ever afters." Where else but real life midtown Manhattan?

Giselle lands, in of all places, underneath a manhole cover in Times Square.
In classic New Yorker fashion, passers-by give the hoop-skirted belle barely a glance. In no time flat, her tiara is stolen by a homeless man and she's doused by rain, but hope reigns supreme when Giselle spies the 'Palace' she's been searching for (actually the billboard fronting of a run down casino).
That's where she meets divorce attorney and single dad McDreamy -- er Robert (Patrick Dempsey, TV's "Grey's Anatomy") as his young daughter Morgan (Rachel Covey, "Duane Hopwood"), recently denied the fairy tale book she'd asked for, spies a real live Princess asking to be let into the palace.

When Giselle asks for directions to a nearby meadow or hollow tree, Robert reluctantly lets her spend the night on his couch in his SoHo apartment. He finds the act of a good Samaritan difficult to undo and before he knows it his curtains have been turned into frocks
and his singing houseguest is cleaning house. She leans out a window and puts out her signature call: "Aahhh. Aahhh. Aaa -- ahhh."

But rather than cuddly blue jays, squirrels, rabbits, and the like, NYC’s finest urban pests come a running: rats, pigeons, flies, and cockroaches. Though taken aback, Giselle pushes on to make "new friends," orchestrating the clean up of Robert’s apartment with her happy pest cohorts to the tune of a "Happy Working Song" (a spoof on Snow White’s "Whistle While You Work"). As the apartment is tidied, birds get injured and plates are dropped. In the film's most hilariously inspired scene -- helpful cockroaches clean the tub! And at the end, a pigeon eats one of the poor roaches.

Of course, this domesticity
is misinterpreted by Nancy, Robert's girlfriend of five years (Idina Menzel, "Rent"),
who is nonetheless wooed back by a disbelieving Robert with Giselle's advice. And if he's surprised that works, imagine his dilemma when her prince, Edward,
really does arrive, accompanied by Pip, a most 'animated' chipmunk, Giselle’s best animated friend.
Emerging in Times Square with his high boots, puffed shirt, and sharp sword,
he attacks a city bus and refers to everyone as “peasants.”

Giselle and Edward aren’t the only ones to have traveled through the manhole, though. The Queen’s lovestruck lackey, Nathaniel (Timothy Spall, "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire"),
comes along. Somehow, in an apparently thinly populated Andalasia, Nathaniel kept Edward busy for years with hunting trolls and other adventures, while steering the young prince away from likely maidens. Nathaniel seems surprisingly New York savvy from the start, slipping into disguises, complete with international accents, and Edward is too self-absorbed to notice or care. When the two buy food in a cafeteria and get a motel room, I find myself wondering how they pay for it all? Gold coins?

Unbeknownst to everyone but Pip (who can’t speak anymore, just pantomime) is the fact that Nathaniel is spying for the queen and has orders to give Giselle a poisoned apple. But when Nathaniel fails twice to off Giselle, Narissa herself makes an appearance
-- right in time for the upcoming "Kings and Queens ball."

There's one other thigh-slapper song and dance production: a mock ballad called "That's How You Know," deploying hundreds of performers,
including rollerbladers and a mariachi band, at locations all over Central Park.
During it, Giselle runs up a hill arms outstretched, a la famous shots in "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Sound of Music."

It's a show-stopper in more ways than one, unfortunately.

Director Kevin Lima and credited screenwriter Bill Kelly are hard pressed to maintain the momentum over the next hour or so, which plays out a lot like a clichéd, tune-free Disney Channel movie.

The film tries to recreate "Sleeping Beauty"'s epic confrontation with the evil witch in gloomy, Gothic Forbidden Mountain. Here, Narissa poisons Giselle at the King and Queen ball. But Robert revives Giselle with a kiss just before the clock strikes twelve. The Queen then turns into a fire-breathing, six-storey tall dragon and takes Robert outside with her and up the skyscraper they’re all in. Giselle heads after them -- once she tosses aside her shoes.

The special effect is disconcerting, and not particularly special. It's as if in the final reel, it was decided to give the men something to do. I feel the ball could’ve been another song-and-dance set piece for Giselle, but it was Robert who ended up muttering a few lyrics.
And what exactly was the point of casting Idina Menzel, one of Broadway's leading musical performers, and not giving her anything to sing? Still, until then, the story is a winner. I expect the songs by Alan Menken ("The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast") and Stephen Schwartz (Disney's "The Hunchback of Notre Dame") will be new classics and they're perfectly placed within "Enchanted."

A singer and trained dancer, Amy Adams is pitch perfect as the beautiful Giselle, both animated and live, giving her wide eyed innocence and wonder.
James Marsden plays the self-absorbed and flawless Prince Edward with goofy charm.
Patrick Dempsey has the tough role as the comedy’s straight man but he gives it his best as McDreamy, er -- Robert, a NYC cynical divorce with a buried heart of gold.
If nothing else, it's worth seeing just for the cartoonish performances of Adams and Marsden as the real-life versions of a classic Disney princess and her Prince Charming. Adams owns her character down to the faintest gasp, twirl, and smile, captivating the audience and carrying the film on her shoulders.
I won’t be shocked if she gets an Oscar nomination for this role.

"Enchanted" is fun most of the way, thanks in part to updates of familiar Disney scenes: like poison fruit comes in the form of a vile apple martini and the magic mirror being a motel television. But the film sends mixed messages about love as Adams' princess falls in true love with Dempsey's skeptical modern bachelor.

As Giselle waits for Edward to come for her, she discovers how the real world has a different view of love from fairytale land. She's confused by ideas like "dating"
and how Robert and his girlfriend Nancy could be in love for years but not yet married. Giselle's outright shocked by the idea of divorce, a discovery that drives her to tears. Giselle says, "Separated forever and ever?" when she learns a client of Robert's is divorcing her husband.

Burned by a former love, Robert is a calloused realist in love and unaffected by the divorce he’s overseeing. He views love in a practical, business-like fashion. The polar opposite of Giselle. Over and over, he explains to Giselle that love can't happen in a day, is not magical, and is a commitment that takes work. Giselle's lovey-dovey version of love, he explains bitterly, is mere fantasy. "Many marriages are happy if they just don't end," he says. "Forget happily ever after."

Giselle and Robert's discussions about love are intriguing and well placed in a Disney family movie. After all, Disney is a chief perpetrator of the Hollywood myth of easy, instant and magical love. The kind where fireworks ring out, cartoon birds sing and couples are magically connected in happiness. It's a breath of fresh air to find a movie stressing that love only begins with magical feelings, but from there, it's about choice and commitment. By featuring characters with very different and very incomplete perspectives on love, "Enchanted" is in position to explore what love really means. Giselle and Robert have the opportunity to learn from each other and apply in their respective relationships the truth that successful love needs both real-world commitment and fairyland romance. And for a while, it seems that maybe that's where all the love talk is headed.

Until the two-thirds mark hits.

The climactic scene changes Giselle. She stops singing and loses some of her innocence and joy. And while the film applauds this change as a positive step in her personal growth, it feels sad to me. Giselle is a strong woman, dynamic character, and great role model, one who’ll be the next popular princess in Disney lore, but the real world changes her, and I'm not sure all the changes are actually positive. For her sake, I almost wish Giselle would've stayed in Andalasia. But I guess then I wouldn't have had so much fun seeing her bring a little bit of that world here.

Instead of using Giselle’s and Robert’s relationships to show a realistic and affirming view of love, "Enchanted" sends mixed messages about what love is. It talks a lot about commitment, but chucks commitment out the window. It talks about the need for couples to get to know each other, but instead affirms the idea that true love is something magically discovered nearly immediately. "Enchanted" didn’t define love incorrectly, but left it unclear and confusing. It feels to me like the filmmakers took the easy way out with a crowd-pleasing resolution at the expense of its values and message.

Why wouldn’t Robert warm to Giselle? She’s sunny, has control of woodland creatures through her voice, and can inspire a couple on the verge of divorce to stay together. But what does Robert offer Giselle? A relationship in the real world where more than half of marriages don’t last? What chemistry does Giselle really have with Robert other than the fact that the story mandated her to become a "real woman" who fell in love with a real guy?

Although "Enchanted" doesn't fully take advantage of its unique idea, it's still a hugely entertaining, clever comic fairy tale. But when it ended, I wondered, Is Giselle better off now? What happens two years down the road?

WGA Writers Strike

I don't normally care to talk about the fiction/film industries, but this seems too important an event to pass up.

Those familiar with the entertainment biz know that film/TV writers went on strike on Monday, November 5, 2007, to settle disputes over proper compensation on residuals for DVDs and other media like the internet. This strike, the first since 1988, has led to the stoppage of production of every American TV broadcast and cable show. Films are still ongoing, but as time goes by, they will be affected, too.

Studio reps say they're surprised that the writers chose to strike and are disappointed because they feel they've made strides in accomodating the writers' demands. Former studio head Michael Eisner for one believes it's a mistake to strike now because the incomes the writers seek aren't available now, but will be three or more years later since alternative media is still developing.

I have a hard time believing the position of the studios. Writers are lashed to the lowest position in the totem pole in the entertainment world. They get the least respect and earn the least, but all projects stem from written scripts. SciFi Channel for one forced webisodes of BSG, requiring the writers to write for free and without credits. Something I don't understand is why they were written and produced in the first place.

I for one prefer to see TV & film production continue, but with outrages like this happening, I'd be perfectly happy to see the established Hollywood system collapse under its own weight. If the strike has to go on for a couple years before the studios and networks see reason, so be it.

Vive la strike!

Review: “Lust, Caution”

Being a fan of Ang Lee, whose “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” masterpiece is one of my top 5 favorite films, I couldn’t resist tracking down the small art house theater in my area that was showing his latest work, which is out only in limited US release: "Lust, Caution."

The Eileen Chang short story that's the basis for Lee's adaptation is as economical as a wound ball of silk thread: Chang packs a lot of emotional yardage into a very small space as she examines, without demystifying the complex relationship between a young Chinese spy in Japanese-occupied Shanghai and the dangerous collaborator she has been assigned to seduce.

Reactions to Lee’s film range from fascinated to bored. I fall toward the latter to my disappointment. I can see that Lee admires Chang's story. But I would say Lee and his long-time screenwriting collaborators, Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus, have stretched Chang's delicate story into a thin, underfed epic.

The life of "Lust, Caution" is poured into the last third; most of what comes before is a long expository flashback buildup, which I felt could’ve been told from the beginning and shortened--greatly.

The picture opens in Shanghai 1942, in the home of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung, one of Asia’s top leading men), security head of the Chinese government that’s collaborating with the occupying Japanese, where his talkative wife (Joan Chen) is entertaining a mahjong party of well-dressed friends. One of them is the beautiful Mrs. Mak Tai Tai (newcomer Tang Wei), the wife of a Hong Kong importer-exporter. When Mr. Yee stops by the table, he and Mrs. Mak share glances that indicate they’re somehow involved. But it’s later revealed that she’s also involved with young Kuang Yu Min (Chinese pop star Wang Leehom), who’s in the resistance.

Mak Tai Tai makes an excuse to leave the game. She goes to a downtown cafe in downtown, where she makes a phone call to Kuang and a group of other men, sits down at a table and begins to remember the past, specifically events in Hong Kong four years earlier.

Cut back to 1938 Hong Kong, where the supposed Mrs. Mak is revealed as college student Wang Chia Chi, an idealistic, naïve girl, who’s enticed into a rebellious, anti-Japanese theatre troupe by Kuang. She develops a crush on him and finds an unexpected calling as a natural actress, who inspires audience members to tearful cries of “China will not fall!” in her troupe’s first patriotic performance. When Kuang gets the idea to turn their group into an unaffiliated amateur resistance cell, she goes along and allows him to persuade her to take the Mak disguise so that she can get close enough to Yee to lure the traitor to his death. But the plot fails when Yee leaves abruptly for Shanghai to accept a promotion, escaping the group’s assassination attempt.

Flash ahead to 1941, when after some difficult years Kuang approaches Wang to resume her role as Mrs. Mak to attempt to seduce Yee again for the same purpose. Under the official auspices of the Communist resistance, Wang goes to Shanghai and this time entangles Yee in a stormy, passionate affair. The outwardly stoic Yee seems on the verge of abandoning his usual cautiousness to his desires, when Wang comes to a crossroad.

Not only are the mission and her life at stake, but so is her real identity. Her role as Mrs. Mak is not only a facade for Yee, but also a trap for herself. And soon she must choose whether it's more valuable to play a false person who is trusted and loved, or a real one whom she barely acknowledges herself.

Defining oneself is a favorite theme of Lee's. In this film, he makes some of his most devastating observations about human nature, finding in his main character a woman who has no identity until she creates one for others. In an early scene, Wang sits in a movie theater crying while watching “Intermezzo”; it's a telling moment because it immediately precedes her emergence as an actress and speaks to the connection between the fiction of a "character" and the emotion it generates within her.

She becomes consumed by playing Mrs. Mak, not only because she completely believes the truth of her role, but because the Yees believe as well. It makes her self-delusion that much more powerful, and when she eventually sleeps with Mr. Yee, their sex scenes are charged with deep emotional intensity because he expresses a need to reveal himself to another person and she feels the gratification of finally becoming someone. To her, convincing him she is Mrs. Mak is actually being Mrs. Mak, and it empowers her--both emotionally and physically--as a fully-formed person rather than the discarded daughter of an expatriate or some street urchin playing with patrician-class values.

At the same time, the real world frequently imposes its unflinching gaze on her gambit and reminds her that she isn't acting in some assassination play, but part of a real plot. In an early sequence that concludes her first "performance" as Mrs. Mak, Wang witnesses her fellow actors clumsily murder another collaborator--a sight too real and unglamorous for her to stay "in character." Later, she receives a precious stone ring that reveals Yee's love, in the process unleashing her own buried feelings. Both events reconnect Wang with her humanity, corrupted by playing her role of Mrs. Mak, ultimately showing her how she not only betrayed those closest to her, but herself as well

Punctuated by several skillfully photographed and intense, even sadomasochistic, love scenes, “Lust, Caution” presents complex characters. Yee, on the surface, appears to be a harsh, even hateful man. But his feelings for Wang bring out another side of him. The relationship between Mr. Yee and Wang with her divided identity is the central dynamic of "Lust, Caution." Both people play roles within roles, engaging in intricate double and triple games that get so complex they become ensnared in entanglements neither one anticipates or wants.

The one place the protagonists are naked, both literally and psychologically, is when they make love, and the sex scenes in "Lust, Caution" are both explicit and essential to illustrating the intensity of their relationship. The sex is graphic and rough. While they might not admit it, this appears to be the only place where the protagonists are honest with each other, where the complex, tortured, ever-changing relationship between them plays itself out.

Wei, Leung and Leehom are all brilliant in their roles. Lee manipulates their characters to evoke sad, beautiful and profound human truths. He pits the two halves of Wang’s character against each other and positions them against her two would-be suitors, Yee and Kuang, creating a dynamic where two men are fighting for two different women in the same frail frame.

Leung's Yee is a man full of secrets, and he finds in Mak a person in whom he can confide--if not the sordid details of his business, at the very least his tormented feelings. Meanwhile, Kuang vows to protect the shrinking-violet Wang from harm, but fails to recognize her real identity until it is too late, as she has already succumbed to the reassuring validation of the Yees' acceptance. (Her question to him--"Why didn't you do that before?"--after he kisses her is one of the movie's most heartbreaking moments.) Lee exercises control of these shifting emotional dynamics to not only maximize the drama in the last third of the film, but to show the desperate and destructive ways that Wang has sealed her own fate.

Thing is, these character subtleties weren’t obviously apparent to me on first, second, or third reflection--and not just because I spent almost half my time reading the English subtitles. I wonder how well the casual viewer will pick up on the character nuances that Lee wove into the film? Something I also didn’t understand was how Wang, after being clumsily initiated into the world of sex by a fellow actor in her troupe, found the seductiveness she needed to entice Yee, particularly in the moments before her first sex encounter with him in which he raped her. And I found it coincidental that she could sing a very touching song to Yee about how they were “needle and thread,” who would never part. I found myself wondering about Yee’s reasons for collaborating with the Japanese, whether he was in it for his own gain or he sincerely believed that working with the Japanese would benefit China? I found it interesting that Wang could speak English, but it didn’t seem relevant to her character and the story, so the few English scenes could have just as well been done in Mandarin. And Kuang’s competing interest in Wang gets a bit lost by the wayside as the story meanders along.

The bones for a great movie are in the film: The tormented femme fatale, the lethal but alluring man she must seduce, the exotic locales, the political intrigue--all punctuated by startling sex between lust-struck hunter and prey. But Lee doesn't zero in on them. He allows long gaps of silence to insinuate themselves unnecessarily between lines of dialogue. He also lavishes a great deal of attention on several shots of Wang sitting in a cafe, dabbing perfume on her wrists: The detail is straight out of Chang's story, but there, it's fleet and concise; Lee stretches it out, crushing it by attempting to load it with importance.

What Chang wrote about eloquently and succinctly--how easily the noblest intentions can be corrupted by love, or at least the promise of it--gets lost in the film. The film focuses so much on the details--like a mahjong game that lasts forever, but we Westerners still don’t understand--we lose sight of the lead actors, whose relationship is all but buried till the last 40 minutes or so of the film.

"Lust, Caution" (shot by Rodrigo Prieto) does have a polished retro-dreamy look. And Lee couldn't have chosen better actors for the cast. It's always a pleasure to watch Joan Chen. She doesn't have much to do here, but playing an aging, possessive beauty, she casts a quiet spell over the picture. Tang, with her fine features and always-questioning eyes, plays Wang with a deft balance of delicacy and toughness to stand up to Leung.

Leung's performance is less moodily romantic than any of those he has given in his work with director Wong Kar-Wai (including "Chunking Express" and "In the Mood for Love")--but here, he pushes beyond romanticism into unsettling territory. His Mr. Yee is at first unreadable, like a distant danger signal at sea that we can't quite make out through the fog. But later in the movie, as Yee's relationship with Wang deepens, he slips into focus. This may be the most unlikable character Leung has ever played--he's such an appealing presence that you can't imagine any director asking him to convey the ruthlessness that this role demands. But Leung pulls off the nearly impossible, making us feel sympathy for a man driven largely by selfish impulses, a man whose cruelty is almost dissolved by love, but not quite as he lets Wang meet her fate--with anguish.

Rated NC-17 for its intense sex scenes (which were cut in the Far East release for Chinese authorities), "Lust, Caution" shows flashes of craft and poignance, teasing people with what it could have been in my opinion.

Review: "American Gangster"

Inspired by an article profiling drug dealer Frank Lucas for “New York” magazine seven years ago, "American Gangster" really means business.

The film opens strong as Frank (Denzel Washington) pours gas on an unknown Puerto Rican man, sets him ablazing and then pumps a couple of shots into the guy as rough mercy. Things don't get any nicer from there.

Frank is the driver for Bumpy Jones (Clarence Williams III), the benevolent gangster-lord of Harlem. But Bumpy, incensed by a discount department store, mutters a final judgment before dying of a heart attack: "This is what's wrong with America -- it's gotten so big you can't find your way ... What right do they have cutting out the suppliers, pushing all the middlemen out, buying direct from the manufacturer?"

Bumpy's not long in the ground before Frank seizes on his dying mentor's words and spins them to his own benefit. He flies to war-torn Vietnam, making his way deep into the jungle and using his entire savings to buy a load of pure heroin from a Chinese warlord, which he then smuggles into the U.S. aboard military planes with the connivance of an army friend and sells in high grade at cut-rate prices on the street, branding his merchandise “Blue Magic” for quality and racking up sales. As he continues his unusual and brilliant import scheme, he brings his family up from Tar Heel country (The movie gets his roots wrong, saying he's from Greensboro, North Carolina: He grew up in tiny LaGrange, about 10 miles southeast of Goldsboro, which he left at 12 in the early 1940s.) to New York City, where he buys an estate for his gray-haired mother (Ruby Dee, just turned 83) and takes his brothers (including Huey, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor) into the business; works out a distribution deal with his Harlem rival Nicky Barnes (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) and Italian mafioso Dominic Cattano (Armand Assante); and weds a beauty contest winner (Lymari Nadal). Frank’s on top of the world, leaving no trace of evidence connecting him to his “Blue Magic” and underplaying the flashy gangland stereotype but ruling his empire when necessary with an iron -- and violent -- hand.

Of course, there’s the law to deal with, on the one hand the corrupt New York City special investigations squad led by chief narcotics detective Trupo (Josh Brolin), who menacingly demands his usual cut of the profits. But he proves less threatening to Frank’s business than Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), this film’s version of Eliot Ness, a detective whose squeaky-clean career is not mirrored by his messy personal life: a custody battle with his wife (Carla Gugino) over his son, womanizing, and financial troubles. But Richie gets appointed by his boss (Ted Levine) to lead a special narcotics federal task force, and he's determined bring down some major criminals, including Frank.

Richie faces his own challenges on the other side of the law. NYC police are, in general, so corrupt that an honest cop is a pariah. When Richie seizes and surrenders $970,000 to his superior officer, the cynical joke -- "Where's the rest of it?" is funny only because it's based in truth. Most of Richie's fellow cops would have taken the cash, and they can't trust someone so trustworthy. The first Ali-Frazier fight serves as a reference point for the film, which spans the years from 1968 to the mid 1970s.

Director Ridley Scott (whose “Gladiator” masterpiece is one of my ten favorite films) and screenwriter Steve Zaillian try to develop each character equally, though it's really Washington's charismatic crook who holds our interest. That's no knock on Crowe, who's solid. Zaillian's script works to portray Frank and Richie as mirror-image strivers -- Frank looking for new possibilities in dealing, Richie going to law school at night -- and shows us how innovations in crime are matched by innovations in crime fighting. Frank wants to work around the Italian mob’s established structure of heroin importing; Richie wants to work without the corrupt infrastructure of the local cops.

Eventually, Richie fastens on Frank and breaks up his brazen, all-or-nothing attempt to ship in one huge last load of heroin as the American effort in Vietnam is collapsing. Before long the two men are facing one another in jail, with Frank negotiating turn state’s evidence in return for special treatment, and Richie getting his opportunity to show off his legal chops in court.

As Frank’s and Richie’s stories gradually intersect, the film’s tone wavers between different themes. Is “American Gangster” a parable of American capitalism, where men like Frank sell narcotics because it's the most profitable work available? Is it a cautionary, rise-and-fall tale about a drug dealer's life and times? Is it the portrait of a dogged cop trying to crack a narcotics smuggling ring? Or of a cop fighting the more insidious evil of police corruption? Or is it just a riveting tale of cop-versus-crook, with two formidable foes circling each other warily, never meeting until their final showdown? The listed possibilities call to mind a host of other films, like “Traffic,” “Scarface,” “The French Connection,” “Prince of the City,” “Heat.”

There are many moments when Ridley Scott's epic feels like a patchwork made of other films, other images. One music cue recycles Bobby Womack's title song from “Across 110th Street.” Frank's twisted vision of the American dream ("This is where I'm from. This is where my family is. My business. My mother. This is my place. This is my country. This is America.") sounds like a paraphrase from “The Godfather.”

But there are also many strong moments where something unique flashes through “American Gangster,” which make you wish there were more of them. Frank's such a businessman that he considers how Nicky Barnes dilutes his dope to maximize street profit "trademark infringement." Richie only becomes aware of Frank's importance after spotting him seated many rows ahead of better-known criminals at the Frasier-Ali fight: "His seats were phenomenal. ..." In a devastating third act speech, Ruby Dee gives the movie its one resounding note of moral outrage. And in the film's most tense scene -- and the one that suggests what “American Gangster” might have been -- Richie's search of Frank's dope plane is derailed by a sneering U.S. Attorney (Roger Bart) because he simply can't believe the idea Frank's been able to get a direct connection, racism overriding police work.

Ridley Scott, who took over for Antoine Fuqua ("Training Day"), puts together a spectacular film on the production level. He and his crew get details right: the clothes, the look of a Harlem diner, the naked women assembling packets of "Blue Magic" heroin in an apartment in the projects, where a wild chase through the hallways caps the film. Scott treats us to many wide street shots and scenes in crowded clubs. Every element from the store fronts to the cars to the costumes look completely genuine. You believe what’s happening at every minute of “American Gangster” could be a very close recreation of what actually went down. There’s a legitimacy to the production that elevates it above what many other directors can do.

But the emotional fire burns only intermittently. We’re never given much of a reason to care about Frank or Richie and so the film becomes a vivid recreation without a dramatic purpose. Everyone involved got the "how" and the "what" of this story down great but forgot the "why." We never learn much about either Frank or Richie beyond their actions and it makes the whole piece shockingly cold and detached.

Except for one 30-second story about seeing a cousin killed by racist cops in North Carolina, we learn nothing about Frank’s past: He's just an empty-hearted killer with the shrewd instincts of a corporate head, and he's willing to get his fingers bloody when necessary. We learn more about Richie in comparison, who's portrayed as one of the few honest cops in North Jersey in the 1960s. But not how or why he turned out that way.

The last 40 minutes of "American Gangster" are as brilliantly directed, acted and action-packed as anything since, well, last year's Oscar-winning mob movie "The Departed," but the film runs long at 157 minutes. Washington and Crowe, two of today’s best leading men, have an easy chemistry when they collide. Still, there isn’t much to their characters. Scott is a great visual designer, but he has rarely brought full human dimension to his characters and I don't feel he does it here.

“American Gangster” is too well made not to enjoy, but it doesn’t get under one’s skin. It’s a good film that feels like it could have been great.