1.   He was obsessed with American gangster movies.

2.   Akira Kurosawa adopts the American gangster style in a film based on an Ed McBain novel.

3.   It could have been a scene from an American gangster movie.

4.   Kitano has done it all before, and the new setting on foreign soil adds little to either his work or the American gangster genre.

5.   Like Brecht populating his plays with what he thought were American gangsters, Leone populated his films with skewed American archetypes.

6.   That film played like a cross between a dream of American gangster movies and the platonic essence of one.

7.   The classic American gangster movie actually grew out of similar ethnic universes.

8.   This makes him an intriguing anomaly, unlike both the typical tight-jawed macho American gangster heroes and his vengeful, somber countrymen.

9.   American gangsters, Kelly says, usually stick closer to home.

10.   Sinaloan traffickers worked out distribution deals with American gangsters.