The film is being touted as a return to bad guy mode for Washington, though the premise sounds a lot less like Training Day and a lot more like The Rock. To wit: a young CIA agent must transfer a prisoner (Washington) after their safe house is compromised. Cue begrudging team-up, camraderie and a third act twist where the agent let's Denzel off the hook. Err, sorry -- spoiler alert? Anyway! No word yet on who will play the ying to Washington's yang, but Chris Pine reportedly met with Universal to talk about the role. Though don't hold your breath -- Pine and Washington are already teamed up in the Tony Scott-directed runaway train thriller Unstoppable, and it's not likely that Universal would want to cause any confusion by pitting the two against each other for Safe House. (Our best guess for the CIA agent: Ryan Gosling.)

All of that aside, however, it's Denzel Washington himself that makes us scratch our heads. Not his talent nor his role choices -- both of which certainly receive high marks. It's that he can somehow still get studios to pay him so well when the Hollywood economy is clearly going away from paying aging stars top dollar. Here's an actor with only three $100 million grossers to his name, only one of which (Remember the Titans) was squarely on his shoulders -- American Gangster and Pelican Brief were the other two. Yes, he was alone in bringing The Book of Eli to within striking distance of the century mark (it reached $94 million earlier this year), but when studios are afraid to book Tom Cruise -- who has a comparible recent history with Washington -- anything under $100 million doesn't feel like enough. There is an arguement that could be made -- Washington's film's are normally kept on a mid-level budget and don't need to make that much money to please the studio -- but in the end, it's somewhat hollow. Small budgets or not, Washington feels like the Last of the Mohicans. The one '90s star that can still command his number without making the studio execs recoil.

Speaking of Wikipedia, here's just one link we followed from the American Gangster page's "sources" links. 

But here on his own home turf, Jerry Seinfeld didn't do nearly as well. His Bee Movie (no. 3) may have captured the top spot on the country’s box office charts, but it slid down a spot here. The good news: it still managed to outgross its competition, Fred Claus (no. 5), in its first week. The Christmas-themed movie starring Vince Vaughn and Paul Giamatti posted a disappointing $14,000 average. But as executives at Warner Bros., who are distributing the movie, will tell anyone who’ll listen, releasing a Christmas movie in November is like running a marathon. It’s all about the slow build to Dec. 25.

Bad reviews and poor word-of-mouth doomed Lions for Lambs (no. 4), which did decent business here in the city, but failed to connect with a national audience, grossing close to $7 million on 2,200 screens. In the city, it’s per screen average equaled that of Bee Movie. Nationally, however, it’s per screen average was in the range of Dan in Real Life (no. 8), which was entering its third week.

Before the Devil Knows Your Dead (no. 6) expanded into a fourth theater, slowing its momentum slightly. It’s per screen average dipped $10,000 in the city, while its overall gross dropped five percent.

And an honorable mention to Holly, the Ron Livingston drama, which managed to gross $35,000 at one theater. It may not have made our top ten, but maybe we’ll see you next week!

List of theaters: Paris, Zeigfeld, Oprheum, East 85th St., 86th St. East, 84th St., Lincoln Plaza, 62nd and Broadway, Lincoln Square, Magic Johnson, 72nd St East, Cinemas 1, 2 &3rd Ave, 64th and 2nd , Imaginasian, Manhattan Twin, First and 62nd St., Angelika Film Center, Quad, IFC Center, Film Forum, Village East, Village Seven, Cinema Village, Union Square, Essex, Battery Park 11, Sunshine, 34th Street, Empire, E-Walk, Chelsea, 19th Street East, and Kips Bay.

Manhattan Weekend Box Office: How moviegoers in the multiplexes of middle America choose to spend their ten-spot is probably a big deal in Hollywood. But here in Manhattan, the hottest movies aren't always the ones making the big bucks nationwide. Using Nielsen numbers for Manhattan theaters alone and comparing them to the performance of the national weekend box office can tell you a lot about our Blue State sensibilities. Or nothing at all! Each Monday afternoon, we will bring you the results.

It’s not to be confused with the soundtrack of the film, which falls short of the movie’s Godfather-ish ambitions.

Unlike Denzel Washington’s fearsome, enigmatic, charming depiction of Frank Lucas, the soundtrack of period hits feels like a Saturday picnic drive with the oldies station on or a hip spinning class. There’s a nice single by Anthony Hamilton, decent period tunes like “Across 110th Street” by Bobby Womack, and fine but unimaginatively chosen smash hits of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s like Sam & Dave’s “Hold On I’m Comin’” to the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There.”

Hank Shocklee, the producer of Bomb Squad fame, offers some stellar instrumentals on the soundtrack too, but it is one of Mr. Shocklee’s former producing credits that rings loud with danger just as the movie is fading to black: Public Enemy’s “Can’t Truss It.”

With its whinnying horn sample and mechanical beats, the song sees Chuck D recalling the horrors of the Middle Passage and warning Black America not to let down its guard an inch. It’s a bizarre closing message to the film, since Chuck D’s lyrics always deprecated the drug trade; insurrectionism was always political, never purely criminal. Frank Lucas was no Angela Davis, these lyrics seem to say.

But Jay-Z, whose career was gearing up just as Public Enemy’s moon was on the wane, has made a career out of crime narratives. His album is not just the back story to the story; it’s the soundtrack that should have been, delivering on the film’s nostalgia for everything from Superfly to Serpico in an idiom that is raw, triumphant, furious and dolorous, but never tame. If base nostalgia is a sort of compromise with the past, Jay Z’s “American Gangster” is not nostalgic because it’s not compromised.

More than a decade (and one rescinded retirement) into his career, Jay-Z is in a unique position to make this album. His debut "Reasonable Doubt" was a delirious paean to the drug game. As more releases followed, Jay scaled back his complex double-time rhymes and struck gold with party jams. “The Black Album” was heralded as his final album. It was not, but it was his finest achievement. Then came "Kingdom Come." It was, despite a few bright spots and competent lyrical work, an uneasy transition from the utter mastery of "The Black Album" to a hip-hop mostly devoid of guns and grams, a sophisticated take on the genre that no one has really invented yet. So while he’s tinkering with the formula, along comes the perfect diversion, where Jay is allowed to play once more with crime stories and street dreams, and infuse it all with the perspective of the elder statesman, of the master.

The album opens with a gravelly definition of what it means to be a gangster. The voice belongs to Idris Elba who not only plays Frank Lucas’s overbrash rival Tango in the movie, but played calculating kingpin Stringer Bell on HBO’s cult hit The Wire.

Elba seems like the perfect entrée into an album that seeks to provide a definitive explanation of what it means to be a drug dealer, and what it means to craft the image of a drug dealer, whether through film or through song. Midway through the album, on “Ignorant Sh*t,” (actually a recycled tune from "Black Album" sessions), Jay lays it out quite clearly: “Actually believe half of what you see, none of what you hear, even if it’s spit by me,” and then goes on to document the ways he will murder and double-murder all comers.

The opening track, “Pray,” makes good use of a breathy Beyonce, as Jay relates a youth spent witnessing crime and learning how “the rules is blurred.” “American Dream” sees the album begin to blossom around a terrific Marvin Gaye sampling track where, amid weepy strings, Hova wonders whether he ought to be considering college instead of eyeing his entry into the game. “We need a place to pitch, we need a mound,” he says, as if the American dream were really just that easy, a piece of land from which to build a fortune. At one point he offers the benediction, one dealer to another, “survive the draughts, I wish you well,” then repeats the line with a twinge of disbelief, saying next “How sick am I? I wish you health, I wish you wheels, I wish you wealth, I wish you insight so you can see for yourself.” It’s a rare moment where the dream is finally for the wisdom to simply survive. “No Hook,” offers a rueful double meaning and a walking tempo. The song has no hook, no chorus, and Jay yelps that he doesn’t need one, but early on it’s clear the hook represents his absent father, a presence replaced by the criminal code.

“Roc Boys,” with its incredibly boisterous staccato horns (and a little help from Kanye West on the hook), offers an all-out celebration of the drug game, of the money, of buying the bar: “Oh what a feelin’, I’m feelin’ life!” “I Know” is a standard Neptunes-produced love song, all Nintendo-style slow jam, only in this case the love being professed is to an addict from the addiction, with clever reversals like “91/2 weeks is better than 12 steps.” On “Success,” Jay laments the lack of comforts in wealth, fancy things, fancy places to go: “How many times can I go to Mr. Chow’s?” The B-3 organ boil-up alongside a thunderous beat provides a perfectly doom-laden backdrop for such musings and threats, while Nas steals at least part of the show with his unreal guest verse. By the final track, “Fallen,” the arc of the narrative is complete: the mighty kingpin comes down, and the people come from all around to take pleasure from the fall; really the same pleasure they took from his rise. It's tragedy: early success always has downfall secreted within itself.

“Blue Magic” and the title track, are bonus tracks, but also two of the best tracks here. “Blue Magic” refers to the brand name on Frank Lucas’s heroin, but it is self-branding that Jay achieves on the track, deepening his timbre but increasing his speed, boasting of his prowess as a crack dealer in a style both effortless and inimitable. For the title track, Just Blaze provides a beat built on a Curtis Mayfield sample, bringing us full circle to Superfly. It’s a tremendous sample, a tremendous beat, and a tremendously solid turn at the mic from Jay, a righteous way to end a mostly righteous, and perhaps more importantly, a smartly conceived, album. Jay may or may not be up to his full potential, and tongues will continue to wag through the coming weeks debating just that point. What’s beyond debate is that he has told the story behind the story, and continues to amaze.