Flawless

Short pooper:
Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Walt (Robert De Niro) defeat and kill the three thugs after the stolen money, but Walt is badly injured. Rusty sacrifices the chance to get sex-reassignment surgery to, instead, pay for saving Walt’s life. They make up and resume the singing lessons.
Longer version:
Over time, Walt’s attitude improves as the singing lessons offered by Rusty visibly help his speech, which, in turn, boosts his self-confidence. He also learns to be more tolerant and respectful towards Rusty himself and his gay/drag queen friends, with Cha-Cha (Wilson Jermaine Heredia) -who affectionately calls him “MR. MY LEFT FOOT”, in honour of Daniel Day-Lewis’ main character from the movie of the same name- particularly sharing the eponymous story with Walt, to give him inspiration to keep fighting.

One day, Rusty and Walt, having become close friends, share a conversation in which Walt brings up how a former colleague of his and Tommy’s (Skipp Sudduth) took advantage from him recently -prior to him suffering the stroke- by stealing a great amount of money from “a criminal he worked for” -Mr. Z (Luis Saguar), the criminal who has been after the stolen cash from the beginning-, lying about it and getting Walt to drive him to the airport so he could flee. In turn, Rusty admits that, the night of the shootout, after the authorities vacated the crime scene, he snuck in, stole the money and has had it hidden in his place ever since, with the intention of using it to pay for his very much-desired sex-reassignment surgery and “finally be a full woman”.

Enraged, Walt confronts him over how paying all along for the singing lessons appeared to be unnecessary and a mere distraction so no one would suspect, to which Rusty retorts that he did not need to justify himself to anyone. This leads to a fallout between them. Meanwhile, Leonard (Barry Miller), the building’s superintendent, comes across a medical bill of Rusty’s and realizes he is hiding the money in his place, thus alerting Mr. Z -who had previously threatened him about it-.

Walt decides to return, for the first time since the stroke, to the nightclub he used to frequent; he finds Tia (Daphne Rubin-Vega) there and apologizes for the way he had treated her, all along, now understanding she genuinely cared for him -contrary to his former regular hookup Karen (Wanda De Jesús) who would only reach out to him for money and severed ties with him when he saw through her-. Upon returning to the apartment building, Leonard warns him “he shouldn’t pay attention to any noise he might hear”, obviously because Mr. Z’s henchmen would be returning for the money.

Rusty gets ambushed by the three men demanding the return of the money and threatening to kill him; Walt notices the commotion and rushes to help. They engage in a shootout. Walt ends up wounded, but both he and Rusty manage to kill all three criminals. Rusty calls an ambulance, has Walt put into it to go to the hospital and pays and instructs the paramedics that “his friend is to receive the best care possible so he can survive”; Walt realizes how Rusty is paying for this and, when he asks what will happen to the surgery, Rusty tenderly reassures him that his life is more important, thus solidifying once again their friendship and mutual respect.

The movie ends with Walt being driven away, while the local prostitutes and some of Rusty’s friends diss and mock the corpses of the criminals, also being driven off; a second scene playing along with the credits has Rusty and Walt continuing, now in definitive good terms, the singing lessons together.