While he finds much to admire, Variety's Todd McCarthy has some issues with Ridley Scott's sprawling Harlem gangster epic American Gangster. While I grant that in some ways Russell Crowe is miscast as an honest Jewish cop from New Jersey, he runs with the role anyway. You need a star of some heft to stand up to the powerful Denzel Washington as a real-life Harlem drug lord.
The movie is hugely entertaining, and should score handily at the boxoffice, no matter its length, as well as with Oscar voters. It could be this year's The Departed. And Washington is a shoo-in for a best actor nod. I am assuming that most critics are not going to be as tough on American Gangster as McCarthy. If they are, that could hurt American Gangster's Oscar longevity. UPDATE: Here's Screen International.
Based on American Gangster's stellar advance tracking with all audiences (well ahead of The Departed, thanks to the urban demo), the Ridley Scott movie should be a big hit when it opens November 2; it could go all the way to the Oscars. But did the movie have to cost so much?
Claudia Eller's LAT story doesn't make clear that Brian Grazer, the 500-pound producer gorilla on the Universal lot, was able to push the movie through with a $100-million price tag--even after the studio had already written off a $30-million loss --in the wake of Stacey Snider's defection to DreamWorks in February 2006.
Grazer cannily took advantage of Universal's need to send a message of strength and viability; brand-new co-chairmen Marc Shmuger and David Linde went ahead with the deluxe deal. If Snider had not left, she would likely have kept the budget down. The key players got paid full price, with rich back ends. Denzel Washington had already gotten paid his upfront guarantee pay-or-play, so he signed on just for his gross. (He also got paid half his $20-million fee on Inside Man.) This way even when American Gangster makes money, so do gross participants Washington, Scott, Grazer and Russell Crowe. That adds up to a huge piece of the final gross going out the door--in all likelihood, some 37.5 25% of the gross. ($37.5 was Universal's all-time high, on Grinch.) The studios are all trying to not go over that 25%, which is still a hideous percentage.
UPDATE: Studio insiders argue that they believed that the movie demanded an epic scale, so they returned to writer Steve Zaillian's original vision. They negotiated overage protection with Grazer and Scott. The gross package was pulled back to 25% from near 60% if everyone had gotten their full cut. American Gangster was shot fast and tight with multiple cameras on real locations, and cost about half of what Michael Mann's Miami Vice cost. And the music budget was rigorously monitored, coming in at just $2 million.
While he finds much to admire, Variety's Todd McCarthy has some issues with Ridley Scott's sprawling Harlem gangster epic American Gangster. While I grant that in some ways Russell Crowe is miscast as an honest Jewish cop from New Jersey, he runs with the role anyway. You need a star of some heft to stand up to the powerful Denzel Washington as a real-life Harlem drug lord. 
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