Director's Cut is too long, and nowhere near as good as I thought it would be

Rating: 8/10 (7 February 2006)

I decided instead of returning it unwatched, I would actually sit through the 229 minute Director's Cut of Once Upon a Time in America. It has DeNiro and Leone, so it's gotta be really good right? Right?
Nope.
Like, it's not a horrible movie by any counts, but it's just way too long. Like some movies benefit from being longer, fleshing everything out, and making it great. And some movies just eat up the time, and make it seem to go by fast.
This does neither.
A lot of it is just purely random. Characters pop up, and don't come back. Some show up for a bit, then come back and have zero significance later on (Joe Pesci being key example). And a lot of it is just plain confusing.
People are getting killed for no reason. People are arguing for no reason. Things are grazed over, and not really talked about. Things happen, and aren't explained.
There's random breast rubbings with a gun barrel, random sex sequences, and just random things in general going on. There's even a wild rape scene featuring DeNiro. And after watching it, you're just left saying "What the hell?", especially because she openly talks to him later in the movie.
This is a 4 hour movie for Christ sake. You'd expect everything to be tied up by the end.
Now I see why Once Upon a Time in Mexico is so flawed.
But it's not all terrible. The actors are all fairly good, even if I've seen them do better stuff before (yet I still don't look at James Woods the same, ever since Videodrome). Leone's direction is great, having the trademarks of a usual Leone film (little dialog, long drawn out shots), but more focus on story as opposed to style (so sadly, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, this movie is not). And Ennio Morricone's score is just perfect.
All in all, it's worth watching, if just for once. By no means is it really Leone's masterpiece as I have heard, but it's worth a look anyway. I'm just really disappointed because of the fact that it just drags for long periods of time, and isn't as stylish as I would have thought.
8/10.