Blu-ray 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 last 5 minutes of the film. However, on the plus side, unlike the HD DVD release, the Blu-Ray release, in addition to containing the theatrical release of the film, also contains the unrated extended cut of the film in full high definition. On the HD DVD release, that version of the film was film was only available in standard definition on the DVD side of that combo release. If you wanted to see the unrated extended cut of this film, you needed to flip the HD DVD over over and watch the DVD side of this combo disc. Quite frankly, the unrated version is the preferred version of this film, at least as far as I am concerned. At least it is now available for the first time in high definition. Recommended.

THE VIDEO: 4 1/4 stars out of 5
As was the case with the HD DVD release, American Gangster on Blu-Ray is was encoded with VC-1 and presented in its original aspect ratio of 1:85:1. The Blu-Ray encode looks identical to that on the HD DVD release. As was the case with the HD DVD release, I was very disappointed with the overall look of this film. 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. But for my prior experience with the HD DVD release, I would have expected a much better looking release for such an important film.

THE AUDIO: 4 1/2 stars out of 5
Unlike the video, the audio on American Gangster received an upgrade from that found on the HD DVD release, namely from Dolby Digital Plus to DTS HD Master Audio as is the norm with Universal Blu-Ray releases. Does the upgrade result in an audible difference? I found the increase in audio quality to be minimal at best. Despite this fact, the audio quality here is quite good and nothing to sneeze at. Dialogue was well recorded and well 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 as the best 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. Overall, this is a fine sounding audio encode even though the inclusion of a lossless track over a lossy track didn’t quite make the improvement that I had otherwise expected.

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

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