Often dazzling symphony of memory

Rating: 8/10 (3 September 1999)

The movie is at its most dazzling when orchestrating space and time into a symphony of memory and emotion - it has such panache that you rather lose your rationality, so that even the playing of a distinctly corny version of	Yesterday	on the first appearance of the aged De Niro seems poignant. In its middle section, the movie settles into a more conventional telling of a gangster melodrama, with a central plot that considering the time involved in the telling may seem a little thin - just the conventional trajectory of young hoods thrown into the big time and then coming to a bad end; the ending allows broader allusions, but they're a little odd and obscure. The characterizations aren't the show here - it's the finesse with which Leone manages to make every scene seem noble and weighty - especially when he's sketching across the passage of years. The movie's strengths and weaknesses are encapsulated in its treatment of women - narrative tools, but thriving amid the ventilating grandeur of Leone's ambition; McGovern (ridiculously but resonantly unchanged after 30 years) is not just a continuing object of desire but also a symbol of his past weakness and folly.