Director Sergio Leone is best known for his classic spaghetti westerns, but for my money, his final movie, gangster epic Once Upon A Time In America, is his most accomplished work. With a running time of 229 minutes (more if you're watching the Extended Director's Cut), it's longer than either Once Upon A Time in the West or The Good The Bad and The Ugly, and it's pacing is just as measured (some might say 'slow'), but the time passes far less painfully, so engaging are the characters and the drama that unfolds.
Spanning decades, the story is truly monumental: it opens in the late 1960s with ageing gangster Noodles (Robert De Niro) returning to the Lower East Side of Manhattan after thirty-five years in hiding, and then proceeds to cut back and forth between the present and the past to show his life as a young boy in an impoverished Jewish ghetto, as a tough gangster during the Prohibition period, and as an old man reacquainting himself with old friends. This skillful technique helps to keep the viewer engrossed long after their bum has gone numb, but fine performances from a stellar cast (which includes James Woods, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, and a young Jennifer Connelly), excellent cinematography, and some brilliantly executed scenes of brutal violence, all accompanied by a wonderfully haunting pan flute score by the brilliant Ennio Morricone, help to ensure that nodding off is unlikely.
Spanning decades, the story is truly monumental: it opens in the late 1960s with ageing gangster Noodles (Robert De Niro) returning to the Lower East Side of Manhattan after thirty-five years in hiding, and then proceeds to cut back and forth between the present and the past to show his life as a young boy in an impoverished Jewish ghetto, as a tough gangster during the Prohibition period, and as an old man reacquainting himself with old friends. This skillful technique helps to keep the viewer engrossed long after their bum has gone numb, but fine performances from a stellar cast (which includes James Woods, Joe Pesci, Danny Aiello, and a young Jennifer Connelly), excellent cinematography, and some brilliantly executed scenes of brutal violence, all accompanied by a wonderfully haunting pan flute score by the brilliant Ennio Morricone, help to ensure that nodding off is unlikely.