With such a promising cast and a director that I have heard great things about, I was utterly disappointed by this film. It started off with signs of a great epic gangster tale and turned into a completely muddled mess with many unanswered questions and some completely ridiculous and pointless scenes.(and yes I did watch the full length version). I love Robert DeNiro and as usual he did a fine acting job, but in all his other gangster films, no matter how many people he kills, I always still had respect for his character, but in this movie he was a lowlife drug-addict, rapist with no care for anyone but himself. Also, James Woods, another fine actor, had some completely ridiculous scenes written for him. I thought the parts where Robert DeNiro called him crazy and he flipped out came completely out of left-field and towards the end the writers just throw in this random comment about how his father died in a nut house and that's why James Woods didn't like being called crazy. So much was left undeveloped in this movie. Also, we never find out who the men are in the beginning that are trying to kill Noodles and we never find out more about Joe Pesci's character. It seems that the writers threw together about five different stories and never fully explained any of them. The only redeeming quality of the film was the story when the characters were young kids. The story ran smoothly in this part of the movie and the kids did a great acting job. Overall, I was thoroughly disappointed by this movie and I don't see how anyone can even compare this to the Godfather 1 and 2, or even Goodfellas. I am sad that I wasted four hours of my life watching this film