"I like the stink of the streets. It cleans out my lungs."

Rating: 9/10 (27 June 2007)

The director's final film, Sergio Leone's 'Once Upon a Time in America' is a spectacular sprawling epic of the lives of a group of Jewish Prohibition-era gangsters, witnessed through the memory of one member, Noodles (Robert De Niro), many decades afterward. Grand in both conception and execution, the film brilliantly combines flawless acting, a poetic script, stunning cinematography and a memorable musical score from long-time Leone-collaborator, Ennio Morricone. Despite weighing in at a hefty 229 minutes (Leone had originally envisioned a 6-hour epic), the film never fails to hold the audience's interest, flashing backwards and forwards between three eras in Noodle's life in an almost dream-like fashion, offering a compelling and comprehensive glimpse into his years as a gangster.
If you're planning on watching this film, it is absolutely imperative  at least for your first viewing  that you track down the 4-hour version, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 and was seen throughout most of Europe. For its American release, the film was infamously massacred into a heavily-cut, fully-chronological 139-minute version, which became a marked critical and commercial flop and failed to garner a single Oscar nomination. Fortunately, the European version has gained greater prominence over the years, and is now quite easily obtained on DVD.
The film is mostly inspired by an autobiographical novel, 'The Hoods,' written by a gangster-turned-informant under the pseudonym Harry Grey. Leone has wanted to adapt the novel since the 1960s, but had long been unable to secure the rights. Interweaving three chapters of the characters' lives  1921, 1933 and 1968  the film focuses primarily on two main characters: the quiet, reflective David "Noodles" Aaronson (played by Scott Tiler as a child, and Robert De Niro as an adult) and the very ambitious, quick-tempered Max Bercovicz (Rusty Jacobs as a child, James Woods as an adult). Also significant are the other younger members of the gang: Patsy (Brian Bloom, James Hayden), Cockeye (Adrian Curran, William Forsythe) and Dominic (Noah Moazezi), as well as Noodles' long time love interest, Deborah (Jennifer Connelly as a child, and Elizabeth McGovern as an adult). In 1968, after thirty-five years in hiding, Noodles returns to New York City to confront his past and the death of his long-time acquaintances, for whose death he blames himself.
The acting in 'Once Upon A Time in America' is absolutely stellar, with highly-dependable leading men De Niro and Woods delivering brilliant performances as life-long friends in a constantly changing personal and professional relationship. The success of the film also hinged largely on the skills of the younger actors, who would be forced to carry lengthy sequences of the narrative on their own. Perhaps surprisingly, they each give assured performances that are very much equal to that of the acting veterans, with particular praise going to Scott Tiler, Rusty Jacobs and Jennifer Connelly (the now-famous actress who, at just fourteen years of age, was making her cinematic debut). Morricone's low-key but very effective soundtrack, largely employing the use of a pan flute, is soft and reflective, very suited to the sombre tone of the film.
At nearly four hours in length, 'Once Upon a Time in America' is not a film that you can just sit down and watch at any time. It requires a little bit of patience and dedication, efforts that will not go unrewarded. When it was released  much to the director's disgust  critics touted the film as "a Jewish 'Godfather.'" Perhaps this was not what Leone particularly had in mind, but many parallels can be drawn between the themes and subject matter of these films, and it is highly likely that fans of Francis Ford Coppola's masterpieces will also thoroughly enjoy this film.