Frank Lucas is the owner of a very successful family business. He has a beautiful, loving wife. He goes to church on Sundays. He loves his mom. But this gangster's not averse to pouring petrol over a man, setting him alight, and shooting him; banging another's head in at a cocktail party with the lid of a grand piano; or smuggling Thai heroin into the US in the coffins of dead Vietnam soldiers.

Richie Roberts is a deadbeat dad. His marriage is in ruins, thanks to his womanising. He's lost custody of his son. His best friend is a mobster. He lives in a pokey flat. His colleagues despise him. But this cop's not averse to turning in the $1.0-million in unmarked bills he finds; attending late-night classes at law school; or sacrificing everything to get his man.

These two flawed men, played by Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe respectively, don’t just offer a detailed insight into the grimy underworld of 1970s Harlem, they provide the actors with some of their meatiest parts this decade. And the Oscar winners deliver, Washington at his baddest and most charming since Training Day', Crowe simply blowing away his wishy washy performance in 'A Good Year'.

They save 'American Gangster' from being just another true-life story brought to the screen, struggling with all the inherent problems of a biopic: the episodic nature, the overlong running time, the self-important tone. And with Ridley Scott downplaying his visual strengths (hyperkinetic battles, sweeping vistas) in favour of gritty, down-on-the-street simplicity, his workmanlike directing tendencies are as exposed as they were in 'Hannibal'.

Without Crowe and Washington whose eventual showdown across a desk is a master class in acting, his classic cat and mouse game would likely have been as dead as the guy in the piano case.

Extras:

The commentary features the director lecturing at exhaustive length on everything from Harlem fashion in the '60s to heroin addiction. Interesting, if you absolutely need to know that there are 135 speaking parts and 360 separate locations in the film… Screenwriter Steven Zaillian ('Gangs of New York', 'Schindler's List') breaks up the dry rhetoric with more relevant, succinct insights into the characters and the battle to get his screenplay filmed.

The real bonus is the extended version. Instead of dragging proceedings out even further, the added 18 minutes help improve the overall flow of the story, with scenes better linked and contextualised. The additional insights provided into the motivations of both cop and gangster are also welcome. But the new ending should have been left on the cutting room floor. While the theatrical version burned out fiercely, the extended version simply fades away.