American Gangster (2007)

Most people think so. 84% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 78%.

Loosely based on the criminal career of Frank Lucas, a gangster from La Grange, North Carolina, who smuggled heroin into the United States on American service planes returning from the Vietnam War, before being detained by a task force led by Newark Detective Richie Roberts. Wikipedia ↗

American Gangster is a 2007 American biographical crime drama directed by Ridley Scott. Denzel Washington stars as Frank Lucas, a real-life Harlem drug lord in the late 1960s and 1970s who built a heroin empire by cutting out the middlemen and importing pure product directly from Southeast Asia, hidden in the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam. Russell Crowe co-stars as Richie Roberts, a doggedly honest Newark detective whose investigation of the heroin epidemic leads him to Lucas — a man so disciplined and discreet that law enforcement doesn't even know he exists for years.

Denzel Washington's Frank Lucas was a fascinating study in contradictions — a man who attended church with his mother, bought her a mansion, and maintained impeccable manners while running an operation that devastated an entire community. Ridley Scott's direction emphasized the parallel lives structure, intercutting Lucas's rise with Roberts's investigation to show how both men operated outside the corrupt systems around them. American Gangster earned $266 million worldwide on a $100 million budget.