HD DVD Review: American Gangster

THE MOVIE: 4 stars out of 5

American Gangster stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe in a story based on the life of Frank Lucas, a drug kingpin in Harlem in the late 1960’s through the early 1970’s. The film, directed by Ridley Scott, traces Mr. Lucas’ career as a drug kingpin from his days as a driver for another Harlem drug lord through his importation of heroin directly from Southeast Asia to his subsequent arrest and cooperation with the authorities. The film also details the life and career of police officer Richie Roberts who sets out to bring down Mr. Lucas and the dirty cops in New York.

The acting in this film is uniformly excellent. I must say that I did find it interesting that Mr. Crowe and Mr. Washington do not appear together on screen until the very end of the movie. There is no interaction at all between these two titans until the lat 5 minutes of the film. I also find it unfortunate that the HD DVD side of these release contains only the theatrical release of the film. If you want to see the unrated extended cut of this film, you need to flip it over and watch the DVD side of this combo disc. Recommended.

THE VIDEO: 4 1/4 stars out of 5

This film was encoded with VC-1 and presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:85:1. I must say from the outset that while I very much enjoyed the film as a film, I was very disappointed with how it looks on this release. The film itself looks rather dull and flat with a very gritty look. It looks as though the film was shot deliberately to make it look like it was filmed in the 1960’s. The colors are rather drab with mediocre black levels. On the plus side, detail is good but the film just falls flat in terms of the vibrancy and accuracy of the colors and the clarity of the image. Given the significance of this film and what appears to be the death knell of the HD DVD format, I expected a much better looking release.

THE AUDIO: 4 1/2 stars out of 5

The audio here is presented with Dolby Digital Plus and not Dolby True HD as has been the norm with recent Universal releases. I am sure that this will be a bone of contention for many. However, I found the audio on this release to be quite good. Dialogue was well recorded and placed in the mix. The dialogue was never unintelligible and was always easy to follow. I also thought that the overall sound of the film was smooth and open albeit not as rich and full sounding of the better audio tracks. In no way could I describe the audio on this release as thin, just not as smooth as the best sounding tracks. Bass was deep and full as well. The surround speakers were well used and added a good sense of depth and immersion in interior scenes but not as effectively as the best, falling a tad short in that respect. Would the film had sounded better had Dolby True HD been used instead of Dolby Digital Plus? It is really hard to say. What I can say is the sound on this release is quite good in its own right.

IN CONCLUSION

While this is an excellent film and well worth a purchase, I just wish that the video presentation was better.

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