A Fictional Gangster’s Encouragement to Seize the Day

Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) --Who let this IRA motherfucker in my bar? [laughs] Just kidding. How's your mother?

Man in Costello's Bar (Peter Crafts) -- Ah, she's on her way out.

Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson) -- We all are. Act accordingly.

This is but one of many exchanges and scenes in the 2006 American crime film, The Departed, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, and Mark Wahlberg that I thoroughly enjoyed. Nicholson plays a positively terrifying, fictional Irish-American gangster, Frank Costello. The character of Frank Costello is based upon the real-life, Irish-American gangster, Whitey Bulger. In this scene, Nicholson's Frank Costello points out the universal truth that our time on this earth is finite and he suggests that one should let that knowledge guide one's actions.