David “Noodles” Aaronson and Maximillian “Max” Bercovicz are two young teens who befriend each other and form the cornerstones of a kid street gang. It's 1918 and the group lives and operates in Manhattan’s Jewish Lower East Side. With cunning and moxie, the gang begins to etch out an income and a reputation, often sparring with Bugsy, a rival gangster. When Bugsy shoots young Dominic, Noodles stabs back and gets sent to prison. He’s released in 1930 and his old gang, now bootleggers during the Prohibition, takes him in. Under Max’s leadership, the gang is ravenous for opportunity and takes on ambitious gigs, stealing, strong-arming, killing, and double-crossing for more and more money. Noodles is less wooed by money and pours his energy into Deborah, an old fling. When she rejects his advances, he rapes her (as we’ve seen him do).
Max’s ambition drives him away from Noodles. Max is interested in strong-arming for the Teamsters and then begins to fixate on robbing the National Reserve. Noodles is disinterested in the former and fears the latter is a suicide mission. He doesn’t go on the gang’s last booze-run, which ends in ambush. With Noodles friends gone and a mark on his head, his life comes crumbing down and he flees New York City. Thirty years later, Noodles returns to his old neighborhood, alerted by a letter which suggests he’s been found and isn’t safe. He’s summoned to Commerce Secretary Bailey’s manor and meets an old, familiar statesmen—who offers him a twisted deal. I’m going to leave my synopsis here, to keep all of the twists, turns, and spoilers intact.
If that synopsis is too long for you, then the film might be too! Clocking in at 3 hours and 49 minutes, this film is a true epic. With a kid in the house, I needed to watch it over two viewings! While I enjoyed most of it and couldn’t imagine cutting anything out, it was a marathon. I think I would have preferred it as a “Watchmen”-style mini-series (and this exercise worries me for the Snyder-cut, which I still haven't seen), but hey!
The film, directed by Sergio Leone, is both an extension of his signature style and a refinement of it, replacing splashy close-ups with a broader sense of world building. I loved the time-jumping and I loved how rich the Manhattan sets appeared as they evolved from era to era. I also loved the rise and fall of Noodles and Max’s friendship (brilliantly played by Robert De Niro and James Woods)—one man lured by women and the other by money, both to criminal extents. Then again, this made it hard to root for either character. While De Niro’s Noodles is positioned as the reasonable soul, his propensity for rape makes him a disgusting protagonist. I don’t believe the film glorifies his choices but still, it’s a lot of film to have no one to root for. But in the spirit of story, placemaking, and revealing truths about the ever evolving American urban landscape, this film triumphs.