American Gangster is in theaters everywhere now Credit: Universal Pictures

Two hours and 20 minutes into Ridley Scott's American Gangster, stars Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe share their first scene together and this big, ambitious crime drama finally flashes to life.

Over a metal table in a police interrogation room, gangster Frank Lucas (Washington) finally sets eyes on his nemesis, scruffy cop Richie Roberts (Crowe). It's a sharply written scene in which the two men deftly probe each other's psyche, trade insults and accusations and try to take each other's measure - eventually finding that they've got a lot in common.

This exchange is good - so good it forces you to recognize what's lacking from the rest of American Gangster. The film is smart, well made, impeccably photographed ... and largely uncompelling.

The Harlem-based Lucas was a real figure who in the late `60s and early `70s built a streamlined drug empire so effective that it left Mafia-financed heroin operations picking up the leftovers. Eliminating the middlemen, Lucas bought heroin from Asian manufacturers, shipped it to the US in the coffins of servicemen killed in Vietnam, and sold the astonishingly pure drug (he called it Blue Magic) so cheaply he drove his competition out of business.