Don't let the title lead you astray, this is no fable-like fairytale; Leone's final film formulating into a mesmeric and thoroughly worthwhile three and a half hour opus.

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2011)

Once Upon a Time in America begins with some music featuring an artist singing of an America to be proud of; of an America worth dying for and a nation of which is generally somewhat better than just rather decent. The places Sergio Leone's 1984 film, the last before his 1989 death, will go are places not necessarily inclined towards painting images of the place as the song would suggest; his film an other-worldly and quite fantastic hierarchical tale told across numerous decades in the early to mid-twentieth century about kids coming to grow into adults but all the while living a persistent existence as criminals. The film begins at the ground zero stage of the 1920s streets of Brooklyn, New York City, before going on well into the 1960s; a stage by which time friendships have been forged; mistakes have been made and people have come and gone for whatever reasons. By the time it has ended, we are exhausted but in a strictly positive way.
Despite being as close to death as he was, we don't necessarily feel Leone lost much of what made him the director he was. When a gangster rummages through an opium den with his cronies looking for somebody specific, he comes face to face with a female patron and her lover; a scene which is allowed to play out in that fashion that sees it oddly disgusting in its overall tone and yet oddly beautiful in its overall craft; that fashion Leone was always able to wedge out of such instances – a wordless exchange purveyed through facial expressions and feeding off of the threat somebody carries via their lowered brows and narrowed eyes. Such an instance is similar to that of how a group of ugly, disfigured bandits waited at a train station nearer the beginning of 1964's A Fistful of Dollars – their toying with the surroundings, systematically seizing and weighing absolutely everything up as what is essentially a hunt for blood takes a brief excursion, feeling prominent.
The reasoning for the gangsters doing what they're doing is because of what Robert De Niro's David Aaronson, nicknamed Noodles, got himself involved in at a very early age and kept with him as he grew up. Leone has the sorts of people after Aaronson mercilessly gun down a young blonde and then beat a guy within an inch of his life in hunting their prey, a playful cut to the desired lying face-up in said drug parlour looking severely spaced out and rather vulnerable heightening tension. As it is, Aaronson knows his time has come; the curious notion of having a lead character in a gangster film effectively run from his both troubles and the enemy, when the comparable thing might be for confrontation thus leading to action. Aaronson's exit and re-entry to New York a whole forty years later is carried out in a remarkably played sequence paying sly homage to its own passing of time; specifically, utilising the sole words of "yesterday" (temporally) and "suddenly" (spacially) so as to establish an awareness of the transition from one era to another.
The proceedings begin in earnest in the 1920s with Aaronson still a boy; a boy forming a clan of four with some friends and a boy whose chief items on one's mind lie in that of milling around with these pals, stealing a little something here and there, and the equally young Deborah towards whom he takes a fancy. We feel Aaronson has a genuine fondness for Deborah; the instance in which, through a corrupt cop doing things he ought not, he is permitted sexual relations of some kind however brief and crude, does not deter him from an overall goal of naturally coming to bond with Deborah. It is during these promiscuous times that he comes into contact with that of the slightly elder, but equally street smart urchin, Max Bercovicz; eventually played by James Woods. Bercovicz appears to ride into proceedings, indeed town, with his family on a horse driven cart, as if unreal; as if coming on in from the horizon: this mythical figure surely not even belonging to this realm. Aaronson and Bercovicz's oneupmanship begins mere minutes after they first meet, the targeting of an elderly drunk as a robbery victim seeing Bercovicz effectively come out on top over Aaronson but nicely teeing up what will become a series of fascinating crime infused interplay. The distinct underpinning of homoeroticism in the pair's relationship is fascinating. Overhanging it all are failed relationships with various women and quotations when things get heated, such is the way these two bicker like an old couple, along the lines of: "Maybe I really should just dump you" or De Niro's gem "Wherever you go, I go"; entirely encapsulating the nature of their ties.
Without letting up, Leone's exploration of these men whom grow up out of the boys we initially witness is little short of tremendous; a firm eye on the pratfalls of a life of crime. The covering of the advancing through a life of crime by Aaronson and Max et al is as dramatic as it is fraught with a great deal of substance; an occurrence in which the crew execute a diamond robbery and then double-cross the employers seeing said instance unfold within an isolated coastal locale rich in grounded tug boats. The killing of those executed a figurative running aground of those, perhaps literally, previously having had to pull along the likes of Aaronson and co. – now reduced to neatly echoing the presence of a number of small tug boats in the vicinity: rusted, unnecessary and not needed – their time to be discarded has come. Leone crosses from strand to strand; decade from decade with ease, the overhanging mystery of whom it is is involved in Aaronson's calling him back looming over everything in what is a miraculously played, really rather wondrous gangster film that is wholly recommended.