Just saw this movie on AMC and I did enjoy it. Not as good as the Godfather (1 and 2), but a nice well paced, epic story.
However, I was slightly confused by the ending. At the beginning, The main character, Noodles (Deniro) sees a newspaper with his three friends and business partners lying dead on the ground.
At the end,
He learns that his friend, Max, wasn’t killed by the police after all, but rather took a different name and entered politics. The fact one of the corpses was burned beyond recognistion obsures this. He says he survived because the police were on his side, that it was a “syndicate” operation.
So, this leaves one “plot hole”(?) to be resolved.
If the police were invovled with the thing from the start, why did the other two (Cockeye and Patsy) die, presumably from police fire (I’m assuming they are dead considering you hear nothing more of them)? The police were in on it, weren’t they, so they’d no not to shoot? Did Patsy and Cockeye not know that and fired anyway?
Or did Max want them both to die, so he wouldn’t have to share the profits with them? He’s obviously not above killing his friends, considering what he did (and tried to do to noodles). But Patsy and Cockeye didn’t betray him either.
Any thoughts?
And as a side note, did anyone else think they did a piss poor job of aging Debrah in the film? 35 years goes by, Noodles and Max look very old. Debrah looks like she’s hardly aged between 1933 and 1968. I’ve heard of people who age well, but…
I watched this movie a few weeks ago for the 4th time and posted here with some questions. Got only a couple of responses. There are still unresolved questions for me, like where did Noodles go for 30 years? I’m assuming that Max didn’t care what happened to Patsy and Cockeye and that he allowed them to die so it wouldn’t be obvious that Max got away. Yes, Deborah never aged, but then there was the whole thing with her removing makeup at the end which must mean something but I don’t know what. What I don’t understand is why Deborah hooked up with Max (or Mr. Bailey).
It’s a great movie. I’m assuming you saw the uncut version. If not, rent it.
The same place Ethan Edwards went in The Searchers?
Yeah, I thought they were drawing out the makeup thing. I don’t know why though.
As for why she hooked up with him, I talked about this with a friend of mine who saw it and their theory was that she was with him pretty much the whole time. Notice how Max is always hanging around whenever he tries to share a moment with debra? And by the same token, always interrupts him, so she can give him that comtempous “Your Mommy’s calling you!”?
Also, considering she probably had the kid while living with Max, She must have gotten together with him awfully quick or been sleeping with him all along for him to believe the kid that resulted was Max’s, rather then Noodles’s.
I saw the 4 hour version. I think that’s the uncut.