it could have been a contender.

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2002)

Although great, "America" just doesn't stand up.
As a whole, Leone's work "America" suffers from one glaring error- poor editing. [And yes, I saw & own the 3 hr. + version.] There is of course, the notoriously annoying phone scene, where a phantom phone rings, and even when a character picks up a phone, it is not _the_ phone which has now been ringing for the past five minutes and quells the middle scenes which are important to putting together the entire jigsaw of a movie that Leone dumped on us. There are numerous transgressions committed by Leone that were completely unnecessary. For example, there is a long shot of Noodles walking across the street. The movie is so long, that it did not need this added one minute of something that we've already seen and could have easily been accounted for with the addition of a small ellipse- it adds nothing to the movie, and we are forced to endure another minute of Leone's overindulgent splendor. Part of what makes the film work is the strange, disjointed continuity. Time shifts from Noodles as a young man to Noodles in his old age with a simple jump cut. This, although interesting at first, is also rather annoying.
The positive sides are numerous: the haunting score by Morricone floats throughout, binding each interwoven sequence together with a sense of tragedy, amidst the beautiful set decoration that in my opinion, is not paralleled amongst similar period pieces. The shock of young Dominic's cold murder and the retaliation that follows is truly amazing and stands as a testament to the brutality of the times. The movie wraps around you, especially in the "friendship" parts of the movie, with the early children, where you get a real glimpse into the native nature of each character, and the tightening friendships that illuminate the protagonists, especially Noodles and Max. By the end, this massive epic leaves you with a sense of completion, and a sense of sadness.
7/10.