Denzel Washington as Frank Lucas in American Gangster David Lee/Courtesy of Universal Studios

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Harlem entrepreneur Frank Lucas sits in a sweaty wooden hut staring down a Chinese general at a heroin-processing center on an opium farm in the Golden Triangle at the height of the Vietnam War.

"Who are you…really?" asks the general, sizing up the brash American.

"You read it," he says, gesturing to the passport that lies between them. "Says right there: Frank Lucas."

"I mean, who do you represent?"

"Frank Lucas."

And so, Frank Lucas found the source of the heroin trade in Cambodia, cut out the middleman, and set up his own unique distribution system using the U.S. military. With the purest form of heroin now pumping onto the streets of Harlem, the rising thug had just cornered a very lucrative and dangerous market.

Based on an August 2000 New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson entitled "Return of Superfly," American Gangster is screenwriter Steve Zaillian's (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York) account of the real-life Frank Lucas's rise and fall as Harlem's drug kingpin in the 1970s. For decades, La Cosa Nostra, a loose confederation of Sicilian mafia groups, controlled the sale of heroin on the streets of Harlem. But Lucas changed all of that. Born in La Grange, North Carolina, he moved to Harlem in 1946 and worked under the guidance of Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson. Unlike the larger-than-life Bumpy (who was later the inspiration for the villain in Shaft (1971)) and the flamboyant Nicky Barnes (known as "Mr. Untouchable"), Lucas was the low-key apprentice who preferred to fly under the radar.

"I think everybody has heard about Nicky Barnes," says Denzel Washington, who portrays Lucas in the Ridley Scott-directed film. "And again it's a testament to Frank's business sense. You never heard about Frank Lucas. Nicky Barnes bought his dope from Frank Lucas — a lot of it. So [some] people were more interested in being in front of the camera and some more in just being behind. And Frank was many layers removed from the streets."

Although he had never had any formal schooling, Lucas understood the law of the streets, and combined with an innate self-control and disciplined sense of ethics, used that understanding to become the most powerful drug czar in Harlem.

But then Richie Roberts entered the picture. Like Lucas, Roberts, too, followed a strict ethical code, but he did so on the other side of the law. He was the kind of NYPD cop that valued a good drug bust more than a free season ticket to the Knicks. Unlike his fellow officers in the 1970s, Roberts did not take the occasional gratuity to turn a blind eye to certain "indiscretions."