Best film of the 80s

Rating: 9/10 (6 December 1999)

If this film wasn't so long, it wouldn't be watchable. Simple story about love, death, betrayal, and redemption, has unmistakeable 70s feel, which was very rare in terrible years of 1980s for a film. Leone gives us something script doesn't: he makes it so slow paced, even simple scenes have some hidden meaning in them, we are allowed to meditate over characters' routine actions, which makes the most trivial details unusual and enigmatic. The film is nostalgic by the time that never existed. Even if it didn't show anything we haven't seen before, and probably events in the movie couldn't inspire philosophical interpretation, thanks to Leone, after watching "Once Upon a Time in America" we have a feeling that we just witnessed something huge and wonderful, even though we are not sure what exactly.