Masterpiece it may be, but unnecessarily misogynist and long.

Rating: 2/10 (10 June 2008)

I don't know whether this film was 4 or even 5 hours long, but it was too much. It's very complex and hard to understand, which although makes it a real crime epic, with such a length of time, made Sergio Leone put in elements that were basically unnecessary to the plot of the film and shocking to the female audience. Two rape scenes that were not included in the book appear in the film. With that and many other elements of hatred and violence towards women suggest a very strong misogynist content. There is also the description of women in inappropriate manners (prostitution). The main character Noodles (played by De Niro) rapes a girl in a hold up, rapes his long time love of his life Deborah (Jennifer Connolly plays her younger self) after she rejects him and then betrays his long-time friends and goes in exile for several decades before he decides to return. All in all it does not make him a very likable character. The ending also, is left unexplained. A wide grin across Noodles's face in the last shot shows a few possibilities about how the entire film is built out to be. It is not badly portrayed as unfortunately some films are when it comes to adaptations on screen, either from a book or a true story. The fact that the contempt for the female race in this film even reaches out to infant children does not appeal to me. This film may have had a standing ovation when it was premiered, but when you're standing in a room with a television for three or four hours, you have to wonder, where exactly did those three hours go?