“American Gangster”

If an endangered species that might be gone in a few years was right outside your window, you’d probably take a look. It just so happens that the movie version of an endangered species is now playing at a theater near you, and it’s “American Gangster.” It’s a large-scale, $100-million-plus Hollywood epic with a big-star cast (Denzel Washington, Russell Crowe) and a formidable creative team (director Ridley Scott, writer Steven Zaillian). It’s also a big-budget film intended for adults, and that’s becoming the rarest sighting in town. This story of drugs and the law set in 1970s Harlem is based less on actual fact than on movie fiction, on re-created myth. This kind of movie would be a terrible thing to lose.