Second in Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time" American trilogy is an unjustly forgotten gem

Rating: Null/10 (28 December 2002)

The least remembered of "spaghetti western" stylist Sergio Leone's features, probably because within its first half-hour it all but buries the genre the Italian director had helped father with "A Fistful of Dollars" and then moves on to an unexpectedly epic and lyrical meditation on loyalty and friendship over a bloody, violent revolutionary backdrop. Set in the early years of the 20th century in Mexico, it's the second panel in the director's trilogy about America, completed by the earlier "Once Upon a Time in the West" and the later "Once Upon a Time in America", telling of the unlikely friendship that develops between greedy, petty Mexican thief Rod Steiger and idealist Irish dynamiter and former IRA revolutionary James Coburn, who become swept up beyond their own expectations in the uprising led by Pancho Villa. Following on from 1968's masterful "Once Upon a Time in the West", Leone maps out the last gasp of the outlaw spirit on the way to civilization, underlining the violent and often wayward routes that change often takes - it's no accident that the film is prefaced by a Mao Tse-Tung quote, "revolution is an act of violence" - and the sacrifices demanded of those involved. It's also a good example of Leone's talents - the film retains the director's unique, in-your-face visual stylings while crossing a number of different genres with striking, surprising ease, and is also surprisingly intimate, since it's (very well) carried by Steiger and Coburn in its entirety, with only one true supporting role and everyone else bit players or extras with little or no dialogue. Many have looked upon it as a political film, but it's not so much about politics as about the way politics impact upon the average person.