Once Upon a Time in America

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Once Upon a Time in America

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Once Upon a Time in America

Burt Young, Danny Aiello, Darlanne Fluegel, Dutch Miller, Elizabeth McGovern

Epic, episodic, tale of the lives of a small group of New York City Jewish gangsters spanning over 40 years. Told mostly in flashbacks and flash-forwards, the movie centers on small-time hood David 'N...( read more  read more... )oodles' Aaronson and his lifelong partners in crime; Max, Cockeye and Patsy and their friends from growing up in the rough Jewish neighborhood of New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, to the last years of Prohibition in the early 1930s, and then to the late 1960s where an elderly Noodles returns to New York after many years in hiding to look into the past.

Id: 10903051

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Once Upon a Time in America Recent Reviews
  • SirPant
    September 18, 2009
    SirPant
    Sergio Leone's epic gangster masterpiece is like a fine oil painting. It's slow paced and beautiful, it's just as good as The Godfather in my opinion.
  • ohagankieran
    April 11, 2009
    ohagankieran
    "Once Upon a Time in America" is probably the most difficult film I have ever encountered in terms of completing an overall accurate cinematic criticism. This movie just grows in myth and debate as the years come and go. Co-writer/director Sergio Leone (who became an internationa...( read more)l success with "A Fistful of Dollars", "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" in the late-1960s) could not really figure out what to do with the complicated novel "Hoods" when adapted to the silver screen. He struggled through with writes, re-writes and several versions of this production. Every version seemingly has more questions than the one before. There are six screenwriters credited (one being Italian film-making giant Federico Fellini, arguably the finest writer-director of movies of any movie era). In the end the final product (the very long running 229-minute version) is one of those films that cannot really be talked about. If you try to talk about this production with someone unfamiliar with it, you will leave them dumb-founded and completely confused. Elements of time, situations, heart of the story and characterization get mixed up into a long and winding road of a movie that is extremely deep and definitely complicated. An elderly Jewish man in the 1960s (Robert DeNiro with heavy makeup) comes back to his old New York neighborhood and goes on a quiet and sad journey of remembrance and personal loss. Flashbacks to the early-1920s start quickly as we see a young group of Jewish adolescents in New York (Scott Tiler, Rusty Jacobs, Adrian Curran and Brian Bloom among them) run around town and take advantage of hard-core criminal syndicates and dim-witted beat police officers. The group is wise beyond their years. They have street-smarts that put them into a high class of law-breakers. Early problems develop and brutal multiple murders take place by Tiler. He is sent to prison for the better part of the 1920s and returns in the 1930s in the form of Robert DeNiro. The other youngsters have grown up to become James Woods (in his first legitimate screen role), William Forsythe and James Hayden. DeNiro's reunion comes and goes like a lightning strike and the group gets back to old crime basics. By this time Prohibition is a way of life for the gangsters of major U.S. metropolitan areas and the quartet takes full advantage of that opportunity to run wild around the city and create immense profits for themselves. Killing men in their way and even at times raping women in their path becomes a norm as the production advances. Other characters leave almost as fast as they appear. Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Treat Williams and Danny Aiello make such short runs that if you are not paying attention closely you might miss them. The women make more pronounced impressions. Youngster Jennifer Connelly grows to become Elizabeth McGovern (DeNiro's childhood love who has aspirations of acting and singing professionally) and Woods finds companionship with the ultra-erotic and smart-mouthed Tuesday Weld (doing her best work by a mile). As the movie continues, DeNiro and Weld develop a bond of hate that turns into mutual respect and eventually they even become the oddest of friends. Woods and DeNiro have a mutual unspoken brotherly love that translates into one of the most important relationships in the history of the movies (DeNiro and Al Pacino would later share a similar bond in the vastly under-rated "Heat" some 11 years later). As all this happens though we begin to wonder if all we are seeing is the true reality. A dream-like beginning (which supposedly shows the fates of the four criminals) does not always fit with an amazingly strange final 30 minutes that seems to defy convention, time constraints for the characters and major cinematic screen-writing principles. Symbolism that has always been prevalent in the Italian cinema also comes into play here and these symbols may indeed hold the true answers to the mysteries within. And then again, maybe not. "Once Upon a Time in America" was Sergio Leone's final film and it grows in myth and legend due to that fact. Much like similar movies like "Giant" (James Dean's final performance) and "Eyes Wide Shut" (Stanley Kubrick's hypnotic final production), this movie just seems to go into a higher stratosphere of Hollywood that totally ignores the typical norms that are always in association with other big-name movie products. James Hayden even died of an apparent drug overdose shortly after this film was initially released while performing on Broadway. And thus the legends grow and multiply. Overall in the end I do believe that "Once Upon a Time in America" is arguably the finest movie of the 1980s. It is definitely a unique production that stands near the paramount of a decade that was mired in stupid comedies, teen flicks and endless horror movie installments. DeNiro is truly a revelation once again here and he dominates most in a production of seemingly endless wonderful performances. The movie is one of those that should be studied and analyzed over and over by those who really want to get to the root of cinematic history and development. Much like its running time, the excellence of "Once Upon a Time in America" is nearly immeasurable.
  • sononothing
    October 13, 2008
    sononothing
    Sergio Leone's final film is another enormous epic, but it's not a western. It's a look at four guys that grow up to be gangsters and the way that their lives have been affected by their chosen path. This is the final chapter in Leone's second trilogy (the other films being the m...( read more)agnificent Once Upon a Time in the West and Duck, You Sucker) chronicling what he thought we turning points in the history of the United States.

    Robert De Niro stars as "Noodles", a Brooklyn street tough that befriends Max (as an adult played by James Woods) and together with two other friends they begin the ascent into the mob from being street thugs to running a speakeasy to pulling hits and robbing diamonds. There is also a love story thrown in along the way between Noodles and Debra (played by a young Jennifer Connelly and Elizabeth McGovern). The story is also intercut by flash forwards of Noodles as an old man attempting to solve a mystery.

    The film is your typical spacious Leone film. He shoots it like his westerns- it's a wide veranda even though it mainly happens in Brooklyn. Only Leone could make The Godfather feel like a short mob movie. Once again Leone uses his trademark close ups to tell a lot of the story without dialogue and it still works, especially when combined with a haunting score from Ennio Morricone. Mossicone's music for OUATIA is one of his best and tries to be a little more urban while still keeping the trademarks of a classic Morricone score. The acting is, of course, first rate with a cast like this.

    When this film was released in the United States in 1984 it was trimmed down to a little over two hours causing Leone's final film to crash like the Hindenburg. The four hour cut is simply a masterpiece of cinema and is one of the greatest mob films ever made. Amazingly Leone still wanted another 45 minutes of footage in the film that he felt was needed to tell the story (much of it having to do with Joe Pesci's character which seems to disappear from the film). Once Upon A Time in America stands as an epitaph for a man that created his own style and redefined a genre in such a way, everyone starting copying him. This is Leone's swan song.
  • thefog1331
    September 20, 2008
    thefog1331
    Besides The Good, The Bad and the Ugly, Sergio Leone's finest work and is above and beyond other crime films of its type--except Goodfellas of course. Nobody beats that.
  • shortcartoonist
    April 22, 2008
    shortcartoonist
    Chronologically anamorphic and a pointed portrait of moral pits, the Prohibition era represented in Leone's expansive film is a landscape housing growth; the growth of friendship, society, efficiency through criminality, and betrayal. The film is a tight deliverance of difficult ...( read more)subject matter and sprawling decades, with the precision of Morricone's score coupled with the sound decoration in the editing adding the final layers to the visual wonders on screen. And, as this is a Leone film, it all comes to focus, but his final epic tends to blur this aim. The portrayal of an eternal youth in these men - as kids who never grow up - is handled in a wrong way through the explicit sexual overtones that barge their way as a showing of the lack of moral compass in these men. However, the ambiguity of the film allows for most down points to be referred, making way for a piece of cinema that peaks and slows at intervals to instill blatant entertainment with intrinsic awe. If anything, the film is likely to reflect its thematic growth through its watching audiences appreciation, and nothing more can be asked of a film than that.
  • Diogenis
    December 15, 2009
    Diogenis
    The best by far, and last, of Sergio Leone's films. Great director.
  • blacksheepboy
    December 10, 2009
    blacksheepboy
    Available now in a four-hour director's cut, Sergio Leone's supreme masterpiece is a splendorous gangster epic with fantastic performances and this magnificent story about friendship and betrayal that culminates in a really bitter, achingly sad ending.
  • m2663ferandez
    December 3, 2009
    m2663ferandez
    one of the greatest movie I have watched
    It runs for almost 4hrs but theres no brpgin scene
    u have to watch it from beginning to end
  • JaneDoeNili
    November 22, 2009
    JaneDoeNili
    A legend. Gangster masterpiece. Too long but worth your time. Seeing Jennifer Connelly as a child was a blast! She was so cute.
  • Nighthawk246
    November 21, 2009
    Nighthawk246
    Serves as a perfect example of how adept and proficient Sergio Leone was as a director. I thought this movie would be more like a sweeping epic gangster movie similar to The Godfather. In a way it is, but more often than not it isn't. The two movies frequently contrast and differ...( read more) with each other. I'm not sure if it's even fair to compare the two because the two films are aiming to accomplish different agendas and both follow distinct paths. The ambiguity and various forms of symbolism presented throughout the film will likely leave people scratching their heads in a state of confusion. I don't think Leone ever meant the film to be cut and dry in any obvious way. He really wanted the viewer to come to their own conclusions as to what has taken place by the conclusion of the film. Leone wanted the audience to think deeply about it. This is truly a thought provoking. Once Upon a Time in America is intelligent, has an intricate narrative, a multiple-layered plot and is profound. The movie is without a doubt an impressive achievement and a work of cinematic genius.
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