Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Leone's final film is an extraordinary, massive-scale crime drama chronicling two New York gangsters across four decades in flashback. The critic praises the immaculate period reconstruction, Ennio Morricone score and epic sweep while noting the arbitrary plotting and shocking content.

Ebert praises the full 227-minute version as an epic poem of violence and greed with complex, compelling flashbacks and emotional depth. He singles out the poetic structure and recurring motifs like the ringing telephone for praise while condemning the shortened U.S. theatrical cut as a travesty.

The critic praises Leone's ambitious final film as a sweeping story of friendship and betrayal spanning decades, noting its strong performances by De Niro and Woods along with Morricone's score.

The critic argues that Leone's film surpasses The Godfather by favoring ambiguity and symbolism over melodrama, exploring themes of time, identity, and memory with masterful visuals. It resists easy interpretation, leaving a profound mystery that lingers in the mind.

The film succeeds brilliantly as epic poetry despite barely working as a gangster film. It combines theatrical gangsters, Western-honed style, and deep melancholy in a grand-scale work of ambiguities and oversized passions.

Leone's vision retains magnificent sweep in this epic of friendship, betrayal, love and death among the Jewish Mafia. The film subsides to a sombre, elegiac emotional core centred on a man bent and broken by time.

Kael finds the full version a vast improvement over the butchered cut, with a dreamy obsessiveness and Robert De Niro's performance taking hold. She praises the reverberant dreamland settings and Leone’s majestic sense of film movement while noting the plot's shakiness and miscasting.

As a magnum opus it falls just a few points shy of greatness, remaining a basic Italian melodrama despite its lush details and mood. Leone's introspective scenes reveal weaknesses with overly choreographed maneuvers and soapy music.

Canby describes the film as a lazily hallucinatory epic attempting to encapsulate 50 years of American social history. He notes the coherent early Brooklyn prologue but criticizes the overall restlessness and lack of focus in the sprawling narrative.

The review calls the sprawling saga a disappointment deficient in clarity, purpose, excitement, and narrative involvement. It notes effective poetic echoes from the time-jumping structure but criticizes the arbitrary feel and unpalatable central character.

The critic praises the film's ambitious nonlinear structure, epic scale, and technical mastery but finds the central characters unsympathetic run-of-the-mill thugs whose story feels mismatched to their limited depth.

The critic calls the film a gangster masterpiece on par with The Godfather, praising its epic scope, unflinching portrayal of crime and betrayal, and the iconic performances by Robert De Niro and James Woods.