Good acting and filming can't mend a poor story

Rating: 4/10 (21 November 2004)

Once Upon a Time in the West is one of my favorite movies, so I was looking very much forward to see this one. De Niro's acting is impeccable in this prohibition time film and there are some really beautiful pictures, especially in the episodes showing the youth of the gang. As usual, Leone moves forward slowly, concentrating on details. The movie, by jumping back and forth between past and present, develops a complicated story you wonder how it is going to end and tension is slowly building up. But then the riddle is solved, and you sit back, wondering how the director could ever have tolerated such an ending. It is incoherent, incredulous, even absurd. I was completely disappointed when the movie ended.