Plot: With the vivid memory of his long-gone childhood friends, Max, Patsy, and Cockeye, etched in his mind, his ferociously loyal partners-in-crime during their rise to prominence in New York's Prohibition-era Lower East Side, the defeated, penniless, and guilt-ridden former gangster, David "Noodles" Aaronson, returns to Manhattan. Not knowing what to expect, while on a mission to shed light on his opaque past, grizzled Noodles reunites with his only living friend, Fat Moe, after thirty-five haunted years of self-exile. However, the relentless, piercing sound of culpability stands in the way of finding closure, as the inscrutable content of a well-worn leather suitcase further complicates matters. And now, against the backdrop of a torn conscience, the sad and bittersweet recollections of more than fifty years of love, death, and everything in between, become inextricably intertwined, leading to even more puzzling questions. But, what are a man's options when he is left with nothing?
Alternative Plot: In 1968, the elderly David "Noodles" Aaronson (Robert De Niro) returns to New York, where he had a career in the criminal underground in the '20s and '30s. Most of his old friends, like longtime partner Max (James Woods), are long gone, yet he feels his past is unresolved. Told in flashbacks, the film follows Noodles from a tough kid in a Jewish slum in New York's Lower East Side, through his rise to bootlegger and then Mafia boss -- a journey marked by violence, betrayal and remorse.
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