They should have emulated Mario Puzo’s and Francis Ford Coppola’s strategy on book/film marketing.

Still, despite the facts, or lack thereof, American Gangster is entertaining.

Denzel, Russel, Cuba, Ted, Armand, et al were good.

And Lyman, what can you say, always awesome!

I would like to ask, however, why Denzel Washington seems to find himself in projects like this. ‘The Hurricane’ played with Ruben Carter’s story quite a bit, too. And ‘The Great Debaters’ changes little things around, too.

Just don’t tell me that the machine that could look into the past in ‘Deja Vu’ was all made up. I can only handle so much truth.

More often than not I think “based on a true story” is a tag they use to generate interest, not something they put up as fact.

I can understand if a film takes the main things that happened and kind of embellishes them a bit, adds an extra scene or two here and there that didn’t really happen. But to complete fabricate the main plot points that the story rests on? Come on! Why not just change the character’s names and make an original movie that isn’t based on anything?

If the main things that happen in the film aren’t true, then don’t say it’s based on a true story. This does kind of change how I look at the movie. If none of those three things are true, then it’s just good writing rather than good writing based on really awesome events. It’s still a good movie, but in this case it really does add an extra “oomph” if it was mostly true.

oh damn its great when we rape history in movies – as long as it is the history of someone else (thats sweet!)