You don't have any reason to not want to see American Gangster. A Ridley Scott-directed gangster epic starring Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe, Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men) and even the RZA (of the Wu-Tang Clan) has more than enough star power to sustain even the weakest script.

Thankfully, the strength of the script isn't an issue. Based on the life of Frank Lucas (Washington), the heroin kingpin of Manhattan, American Gangster--though it doesn't fully stack up to the heavyweights of the gangster genre like The Godfather or Goodfellas--generally holds its own.

Washington is as alternately menacing and charming as ever, and Crowe brings his usual weary and tortured character to life as passionately as usual.

Sometimes they are forced to deliver the oddly out-of-character remark as a deep thought, but generally the dialogue is sharp and seemingly part of the period and the streets that the characters work.

American Gangster renders those streets with great period detail and precision, and their sweat and heat and blood create some of the best moments of the movie, such as in the climatic takeover of Frank Lucas's drug-running operation in a tenement apartment.

There is a great hazy and relaxed 70s-era sheen over the entire film, with the period soundtrack complementing it in almost all cases.

The film could use some editing at times, as its two-and-a-half-hour running time seems about 15 minutes too long, though that time doesn't come in the extremely entertaining last half-hour, when Lucas's drug empire crumbles around him.

The film's efforts at paralleling the lives of Lucas and Detective Roberts (Crowe) drain some of the time and are awkward at other parts but probably make little difference to the enjoyment of the film.

Overall, little gets in the way of a movie that has all of the pieces to be extraordinary and usually is.