Hypnotic and forceful. A film that is truly unforgettable. The best 226 min movie around since Lawrence of Arabia!

Rating: 10/10 (11 February 2000)

The late Sergio Leone's final motion picture is a long, slow paced 226 minute (that's three hours and forty six minutes), movie that takes its time to set mood, character identity and establish the ground work of a story that is fundamentally about the trials of aquiring the "american dream". The film keeps a very slow pace throughout, and as a result becomes entrancing and before to long you really start to hope you never leave the movie. You wish it wouldn't stop. The world the characters exist in is one of non-existence. Coupled with the vivid imagery Leone brings onto the screen along with Ennio Morricone's numbing score, the film is like a surreal vision of what life could be, until the very end when it is found what the real world is like. Full of people you thought were friends, but would step over you to get a better shot at life. The moral: don't waste time trying to get what you can't have. Live with what you got. In both the opening and closing sequences of the film Robert De Niro is seen in an Opium Den. In the beginning he is haunted by the ring of a telephone, and no amount of opium can help him hide from the ringing of the call he made and thinks lead to the death of his "friend".In the final sequence he realizes the truth, smokes his opium,lays back, and waits for the ringing to start. It doesn't. He then faces the camera (in a definative Leone style) and smiles. His guilt is gone.