I'm a business, man

"This is America." The statement, uttered by the titular gangster Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), resonates throughout "American Gangster," and the movie proves its Americanness to a fault. A sprawling, sometimes plodding, often confusing epic, "Gangster" is American through and through, tracing the rise and fall of Frank Lucas in Harlem.\nDon't believe the hype. It's not the black "Scarface" or the black "Godfather." Comparing "American Gangster" to other gangster movies misses the mark, because few others wear their morality on their sleeve the way "Gangster" does. By refusing to choose between a bleak crime saga and a cat-and-mouse cops-and-robbers tale, director Ridley Scott and screenwriter Steven Zaillian try to find a middle way.\nPlaying the adversary to Frank Lucas' "honest gangster" is Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), the "honest cop" who is trying to take down the mysterious super-pure heroin flowing through New York. As it turns out, Lucas is smuggling the drugs in the coffins of dead soldiers being sent home from the Vietnam War.\nBoth actors are at the top of their game, each playing a layered character without chewing up the scenery with showboating Best Actor bait. Washington plays Lucas without expression, taking the businessman mentality to its extreme, only occasionally flashing violence; even then, he barely blinks. Crowe, muddling his Jersey accent, seems to bumble about as Roberts, but that dazed expression hides the single-minded intensity of his pursuit.\nDespite these solid performances, the film's real star is Ridley Scott, whose directing turns down the action to a slow boil -- occasionally too slow -- but usually just enough to keep our interest without turning into some testosterone-drenched '80s cop show. Even though the movie stretches events out, the action set pieces work, too, including a riveting chase in a housing project. The whole contraption moves with the exactitude of a Swiss clock.\nPerhaps, then, it's this cool precision that makes the movie feel too disconnected from its viewer. The frigid menace of Frank Lucas seems like Superfly without the soul. His whole idea of family, though he constantly refers to it, also seems distant. None of his brothers or partners in crime distinguish themselves from each other.\nThe myriad of supporting characters, Lucas' interchangeable brothers included, serve as further distractions from the central plot. The honest cop even has a host of "Serpico" refugees as teammates. Sprawling out too far, the subplots that slow the movie's pace also zap its passion. If anything, this is less a story of American gangsters than of American corporations, headed by cold-eyed CEOs, hounded by relentless investigators.\nIn the end, Denzel and Russell still make it worth the price of admission, but "American Gangster" could have been much more.