Fifth viewing.

The Greatest Gangster Film Ever. I’m Not Kidding. I Seriously Think This Is Far Superior To The Godfather.

I’ve been sitting at my keyboard for approximately an hour, and I haven’t been able to type a single letter until now. I have recently re-watched what I consider to be possibly my favourite film of all time, Once Upon a Time in America. I have assigned myself with the nearly impossible task of reviewing the film. How can I even begin to express the strange beauty of the film? The nostalgia? The sadness of Ennio Morricone’s theme? How can I begin to explain how genius the story is?

When I first saw Once Upon a Time in America my…

Whoa.

Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, with no exaggeration, is one of the most moving and potent cinematic experiences that I have ever had. It's a combination of everything that made me love the cinema: Immaculate cinematography, wonderful direction, a tight and free-flowing screenplay, underlying themes woven throughout the film, pitch-perfect editing, incredible performances......

This film has EVERYTHING.

Simultaneously a gangster story, a coming-of-age fable, and an ode to aging; the film cuts between these three feelings and time-periods, all with the same characters but with each of them in different stages of development. Both physically and emotionally, the audience gets a grasp of their lives throughout the 3hr and 50 minute run-time. For most of the…

I kinda hate gangster films. This isn't a new idea to me, but this film more or less crystalized what I hate about them. In short, gangsters are not Robin Hood. They do not rob from the rich to give to the poor. They do not empower the poor; they feed off of them. They do not fight injustice disguised as law; they simply treat the law as coincidental. The closest argument you have is that they gave immigrant populations recourse to power in a system that hated them, and that is certainly true. But you rarely see them wield that power toward anything but assimilating into the system in a backward sort of way. While some gangster films have…

.... a Godfather parody from Sergio Leone?

This film tried so hard to be something great and turned into anything but. So many were terribly miscast, from Noodles Jr. to adult Deborah, and the intricate weaving of past & present did nothing to engage me. Certain setpieces and acts of violence were too heavy-handed. There wasn't nearly enough Joe Pesci. The characters themselves were uninteresting and often times laughable ('.... you're crazy'.... 'don't SAY THAT!!!' ). Only a few things kept me around for the long 230 minute runtime: the abundance of beautiful shots, the score from Morricone that was perfection when it worked (like the instrumental version of Yesterday), the presence of the great actors themselves, and a hope that…

Sergio Leone's gangster epic Once Upon a Time in America is not only the director's swan song, but it is also the film that I would like to think of when talking his work as a whole as his finest achievement. A mammoth gangster epic but also a personal reflection on the director's own direction in life that could only translate to the screen in such a manner. The incredible length makes for something exhausting but it's never in the sense that it deters from the glory that it presents. There are many tales it tells all at once and with the many moods it creates, something more meaningful within the tapestry being formed. On this count, it could very…

Mobsters as children who never grow up, Once Upon a Time in America replaces Sergio Leone's lawless Wild West with the lawless world of organised crime. Following a thematic through-line from Once Upon a Time in the West, we witness individual struggle be replaced with more complex, more corrupt systems. This film is obviously a dream, but not necessarily a dream of one of the characters. This is a fantasy film, filled with moments that make no sense and feel like an exaggerated truth. The mythical rise and fall of these gangsters is a childlike unreality. It is forced storytelling on top of a truth inspired plot, a cinematic distortion of the world. There are moments here of pure cinema,…