DENZEL WASHINGTON AND RUSSELL CROWE PLAY PATRIOTS

The stars of American Gangster realize the gangster and the cop they are portraying are patriotic in their own way.

Harlem drug dealer Frank Lucas and New Jersey cop Richie Roberts were on opposite sides of the law but they both had something in common, they both loved America in their own way.

In the film American Gangster Denzel Washington portrays Lucas, the entrepreneurial gangster who seized on the opportunity to make millions by stashing heroin in the coffins of Vietnam soldiers coming home. Denzel says in his own mind Frank Lucas considered himself a patriot.

“I think he’s a brilliant man who went off in the wrong direction, mastered that and paid the price for it. He kept talking to me about America. He says, ‘you know I’m an American and I believe and I’m very patriotic,’ and yet he was responsible for destroying many Americans. He is a complex man.”

Russell Crowe plays Richie Roberts, a New Jersey detective who simultaneously put himself through law school at night to become a defense attorney, an extra added notch on his belt to put the bad guys away, and bring down corruption for his country.

“As a man meeting Richie and getting to talk to him and understanding where he comes from and stuff, I sort of see him as a guy who sort of believes greatly in his country. Because he had the badge and he took the oath and he was there to protect and serve and these other guys were doing something else. And over time it really started to get on his wick and it became this thing where he saw that the greatest service that he could do at that time was bring that corruption down.”

Both actors spent quality time with the men they were portraying. Russell met Richie often at his home in Nyack and Denzel returned to his old stomping grounds in Harlem to learn all he could about Frank. American Gangster is currently playing in theaters.