By Stephen Cooney

Take intelligence, a cruel ruthlessness, ambition, entrepreneurship, recklessness, bravery and leadership. Cover it all up with a suave, smooth-talking attitude and you have an icon of the criminal world.

Think of the street smarts and endearment of Michael Corleone plus the ruthlessness and temper of his brother Sonny and you have Frank Lucas. He is the suave, ruthless, but endearing, drug lord played by Denzel Washington in Ridley Scott’s “American Gangster.”

Add the same unwavering honesty to the formula and you have a law enforcement agent that seems to jump off the pages of a comic book. Take Eliot Ness from “The Untouchables” and Wyatt Earp from “Tombstone,” and you end up somewhere along the line of Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), the honest, hard-working, reckless cop who is the only sense of law left in a world filled with crooked cops and hustlers.

As Washington portrays him, Lucas seems larger than life itself throughout the entire movie. He moves through the film with the undying reality of a true crime lord: He is organized, he is ruthless, he loves his family. More importantly, he is smart.

Avoiding the middle ground, he finds its source and then becomes it. Never in the movie is Lucas seen jostling for the approval or the satisfaction of the other man; Lucas is the man and he knows it. He is brutal with those outside his organization and just as merciless with his own family when they step out of line. Not only physically ruthless, but he is equally so as a businessman, flooding the heroin market with a better, cheaper product and then expands on his success.

Later, Lucas reaches out of his foothold in Harlem to the greater metropolis that is New York City and eventually to those who run organized crime: the Mafia.

While Lucas is building his business, there are ample opportunities to realize that the man is a criminal. However, his charisma draws one away from the idea. Throughout the film, there is no attempt to hide what Lucas is or how he functions-murder, exploitation and beating are not ruled out. Despite this, it is almost impossible to dislike him.

Every time Lucas does something that might make a viewer shy away from endearing him, he comes back with either a comical interjection, a business viewpoint or a strong relationship with a family member. He immediately brings his family into his new upscale life and falls in love with his dream woman all while maintaining an undying desire to remain below the radar, to never to become a pimp or a hustler, but rather a businessman.

These qualities, even when coming in through his criminal and ruthless nature, make Lucas larger than life and even harder to dislike.

He becomes an icon of the criminal underworld who is just another man trying to make his way in America and carve a piece of the world for himself and his family.

As played by Crowe, Robbins is a detective who seems too honest for his own good and even too good to be true. He follows every rule and does not ever consider violating his badge. Robbins and the crew of investigators he builds seem to be the only true law enforcement left in a dark and twisted world. As other police officers grow to dislike Robbins, he becomes the last ray of hope in a lawless world; the only sense of true law in the movie.

Issues in his personal life make him even more engaging. Struggling between being an honest cop and a bad husband, he is dealing with an estranged ex-wife and his abilities as a father.

Robbins never falters; he remains honest and determined to not only destroy the criminal underworld but the police officers that are on the take. Robbins’ personal life and lack of perfection make him real. The viewer can overlook his super-cop mentality when it becomes visible that he has his own personal problems and issues. Robbins and his men become the Wild West police force of New York City waiting to rid the world of evil.

Both of the major characters make themselves endearing to viewers. It becomes nearly impossible to dislike either Robbins or Lucas.

Neither seems perfect, but that makes them all the more real. Both have secrets in their lives which prevent perfection but which, in turn, allow them to be loved.

The two actors play these characters impeccably. Washington is callous when the movie calls for it and then turns around to be loving and almost comical to cover up his criminal ways. He covers every situation that could make Lucas seem like the evil in society and with both a suave resistance to criminality and a whole-hearted affection for his family.

If Washington uses smooth talking and family to cover up Lucas’ faults, Crowe does the opposite for Robbins. Using his family and friendships to cover up Robbins’ perfect police honesty, Crowe shows Robbins as a struggling man trying to find his way. Robbins becomes the perfect cop and the imperfect family man.

The relationships these two show in their positions, and eventually with one another, make the movie even more dynamic. The characters they portray control the movie and draw themselves to the viewer.

In “American Gangster” Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, a hard-working and determined cop on a quest to nab the city’s most dangerous and successful mobster, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). (AllMoviePhotos.com)