With Nicky Barnes, Thelma Grant, Jackie Hayden, Frank James, Louie Diaz and others. Distributed by Magnolia Pictures. 1 hour, 32 mins. No MPAA rating (profanity, drugs, adult themes). Playing at AMC Cherry Hill, AMC Franklin Mills, the Pearl and United Artists Cheltenham.
Poised to capitalize on the presence, and star wattage (Denzel! Crowe!), of American Gangster in theaters next week, Mr. Untouchable is a talking-heads documentary set in the same lucrative, lurid world of drug-dealing 1970s New York. Nicky Barnes, who worked in the shadow of American Gangster's Frank Lucas until Lucas went to jail (Barnes is played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in Gangster), was a junkie turned cocaine and heroin kingpin. In 1977, he appeared on the cover of the New York Times' Sunday magazine, under the headline "Mr. Untouchable."
