Snapshot of the Day: American Gangster

Denzel, Pauletta and Mel Gibson @ Special Screening for American Gangster last night.

-----
American Gangster, directed by Ridley Scott, , starring Denzel Washington and Russell Crowe

A drug lord smuggles heroin into Harlem during the 1970s by hiding the stash inside the coffins of American soldiers returning from Vietnam. Formerly titled "Tru", American Gangster is a biopic of Harlem heroin kingpin Frank Lucas.

Lucas grew up in rural, segregated North Carolina where he watched as his cousin was shot by the Klan for looking at a white girl.

In the early 1970s he became the biggest heroin dealer in Harlem with a smuggling scheme that imported heroin out of Southeast Asia in the caskets of dead Vietnam soldiers.

He soon made upwards of one million dollars a day in drug sales. American Gangster centers on narcotics lawman Richie Roberts' struggle to bring down Lucas, whose flamboyant style earned him the street name "Superfly", and catching the crooked cops and drug dealers who profited from Lucas's scheme.