Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz

Maximilian "Max" Bercovicz is the deuteragonist turned main antagonist of the critically acclaimed 1984 gangster film, Once Upon a Time in America. Like Noodles, before him, he is a gangster and a thug who robs, steals, and murders for a living. But unlike Noodles, Max feels little remorse for his actions, as well as the fact that Max is far more greedy and ambitious than the street-level Noodles, willing to betray and murder his friends in doing so. After the failed heist of the Federal Reserve Bank, he made a deal with the Crime Syndicate to live under a new identity as Senator Bailey, and went on to marry Noodles' love interest, Deborah, even giving birth to a son named David. When targeted by the Crime Syndicate as he knew too much, he asked Noodles to kill him as he was the only person he could accept it from, but Noodles declined as he claimed his friend had already died a long time ago. Near the end, he supposedly jumps into a garbage truck killing himself, though there is no full proof of this, and his fate is left ambiguous at the end of the film.

He is portrayed by legendary actor James Woods, who also portrayed Martin Walker, Owlman, Ned Trent, Hades, Dr. Phillium Benedict, Falcon, and Byron De La Beckwith