Give Universal and producer Brian Grazer credit: They certainly know how to get people psyched up for a movie, and the run-up to American Gangster may well be the most prime example of the skill. Everything about the movie's brassy marketing campaign—from the stark black and white posters to the immodest title—sells the eager public on the promise of a hyped-up hybrid of Goodfellas and Scarface. Exposure to the movie's trailer or 30-second TV spot is enough to make a Buddhist monk go ballistic on a pimply usher in the theater lobby.

As it turns out, though, the anticipation for American Gangster is emphatically better than actually watching American Gangster. The film is the worst kind of cinematic disappointment: a slow-paced train-wreck that doesn't even have the decency to be interesting.

The film recounts the battle between gangster Frank Lucas (a catatonic Denzel Washington)—the inspiration for Superfly and a key player in the James Ellroy novel The Cold Six Thousand who built an empire smuggling cocaine in the caskets of dead soldiers coming back from Vietnam—and Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe, struggling through another role that requires him to bust out his mushy-American accent). Screenwriter Steve Zaillian goes about the dutiful business of giving Lucas the full biopic treatment, but it's abundantly obvious (even to Washington and Crowe, who seem locked in a duel over who can act the most disinterested) that there's not all that much to either Lucas or Roberts: Each is a practical company man trudging about their respective impersonal business.

Director Ridley Scott has made a lot of weird movies, but he's never seemed as perplexed by his material as he does here. The esteemed filmmaker seems bewildered by the whole undertaking, as though he's as curious as we are about why anybody would pay $11 and give up nearly three hours to watch a slow-moving battle of wits between two affable, quiet men.

Consider American Gangster the first (probably of many) big let-down of the fall movie season.