Russell Crowe and Denzel Washington in American Gangster David Lee/Courtesy of Universal Studios

Aside from the opportunity to once again work with Scott and Washington, Crowe was also attracted by the film's inherent duality: "I think that's one of the fascinating things about the two characters and about the story itself: that none of that's clear. There's not a clear singular morality. And when you get the opportunity to play that sort of thing — which is nothing more than reality and the sort of humanity as it exists — it's just a bit of fun. Richie is an honest guy but as his wife calls him out in the court: 'You're only honest in one area [police work]. You try and buy yourself favors for all the shit that you do.' I just think that's an honest appraisal of who he was at that time. But it also leaks into that area of discussing why people go bad in the first place, or what the process of Frank Lucas was, to become a drug dealer."

Shooting in over 100-degree heat on the streets of New York in a record number of locations brought with it another set of challenges: "One hundred and eighty locations is ludicrous," Scott acquiesces. "Thirty-five is reasonable. There were about 180 locations in five boroughs. Right now in the movie, I have about 35 or 40 speaking parts, and this is 130 speaking parts, so there's like millions of pieces of minutiae. But that's what is so interesting about it. I think [this film] could easily take a position as a talking movie, but somehow it's not. There's a lot of talking, but it doesn't feel like it's a talky movie."

Within Harlem alone, Scott says there may have been 50 or 60 locations: "I found several interiors that haven't been touched since the '40s. I just walked in and said, 'Don't touch it.' And they said, 'But it's not healthy.' And I said, 'I don't care. Get masks.' And we'd just shoot in the house."

All sets were actual site locations. Only Lucas's favorite coffee shop was built for the shoot.

"People talk about Harlem perceived as a village," Scott says, "but it's not a village at all. It's an area of wide-avenued boulevards for the most part, and they're hard to shoot. It's hard to get an angle, because you got a whole bunch of concrete pavement down the middle where there ought to be trees that have been removed or didn't survive. That part of Manhattan was kind of always planned a little bit like Paris."

The whole time Scott was reconstructing Lucas's coffee shop and Washington and his "country boys" were re-enacting his life on 125th Street, Frank Lucas himself was watching. So, to echo the Chinese general's question, who was Frank Lucas really? He was arrested in 1975 and convicted on both state and federal drug violations. The next year he was sentenced to 70 years in prison. But following his conviction, Lucas gave evidence that led to the conviction of over 100 drug dealers, and with a reduced sentence, he was once again a free man by 1981.

Asked what he found most interesting about Lucas, Scott replies: "The fact that he's not a normal person. I'd say [to Frank]: 'Any regrets? Any remorse? Were you ever afraid?' [He answered]: 'When? For what reason? I walk the streets. Where I am in the streets, that's the jungle.' I wouldn't compare the jungle of Harlem with the edge of that world between war zones and Chinese poppy groves. I'd say I'd take Harlem any time. But he never thought about it."