Once Upon A Time In America (1984) *****

Sergio Leone's final film is another enormous epic, but it's not a western. It's a look at four guys that grow up to be gangsters and the way that their lives have been affected by their chosen path. This is the final chapter in Leone's second trilogy (the other films being the magnificent Once Upon a Time in the West and Duck, You Sucker) chronicling what he thought we turning points in the history of the United States.

Robert De Niro stars as "Noodles", a Brooklyn street tough that befriends Max (as an adult played by James Woods) and together with two other friends they begin the ascent into the mob from being street thugs to running a speakeasy to pulling hits and robbing diamonds. There is also a love story thrown in along the way between Noodles and Debra (played by a young Jennifer Connelly and Elizabeth McGovern). The story is also intercut by flash forwards of Noodles as an old man attempting to solve a mystery.

The film is your typical spacious Leone film. He shoots it like his westerns- it's a wide veranda even though it mainly happens in Brooklyn. Only Leone could make The Godfather feel like a short mob movie. Once again Leone uses his trademark close ups to tell a lot of the story without dialogue and it still works, especially when combined with a haunting score from Ennio Morricone. Mossicone's music for OUATIA is one of his best and tries to be a little more urban while still keeping the trademarks of a classic Morricone score. The acting is, of course, first rate with a cast like this.

When this film was released in the United States in 1984 it was trimmed down to a little over two hours causing Leone's final film to crash like the Hindenburg. The four hour cut is simply a masterpiece of cinema and is one of the greatest mob films ever made. Amazingly Leone still wanted another 45 minutes of footage in the film that he felt was needed to tell the story (much of it having to do with Joe Pesci's character which seems to disappear from the film). Once Upon A Time in America stands as an epitaph for a man that created his own style and redefined a genre in such a way, everyone starting copying him. This is Leone's swan song.