American Gangster

“There are two sides to the American dream.”

Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington) learns the heroin trade in Harlem and wants to run it his own way, cutting out the middlemen and buying direct from the source in Southeast Asia. His product comes home on American service planes returning from Vietnam, and Ridley Scott tracks the money as it moves up through the neighborhood. Newark detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is building a task force to find out who is behind it, and Frank keeps his work quiet.