Too long for comfort.

Rating: 4/10 (11 January 2007)

An attempt by director Sergio Leone at making the a gangster epic falls flat on its face. The movie has a lot of things going for it. The sets, cinematography, costumes, music and acting are top notch. James Wood as Max is excellent, whereas Robert De Niro is his usual excellent self and Elizabeth McGovern looks ravishing. The script is excellent too.
The problems are few but they are glaring. First of all, the movie is stretched out and awfully long at 3 hours and 47 minutes. I won't compare this film with Godfather, but the director sure took some inspiration from it. Just like godfather it has scenes where nothing is being said and only the music is playing but unlike Godfather absolutely no action is taking place on the screen, whereas in Godfather more action takes place when nothing is being said. This makes the movie awfully boring at stretch and not even its beautiful music can save it from being yawned at. Secondly, some of the scenes are awfully juvenile and could have been handled with more maturity. Specially when they get the Insurance agent's wife to check them and see if she can feel the person she was with during the diamond heist (I don't want to write as to what was going on in the movie).
Only if they could cut out at least a good hour from the movie, it would be a masterful gangster drama.