I’ll never understand people’s fascination with the mob and the huge popularity and high rating of the gangster movies depicting the lifestyle of these crooks. In Once Upon a Time in America we get to see a gang of jewish delinquents who grow up mugging drunkards in early 20th century Manhattan, helping out smugglers and eventually getting involved in a kill and a stabbing of a police officer. Later we witness them running a speakeasy during the prohibition era, and while not involved in shady business, they steal diamonds in violent heists, murder people and just for the heck of it rape a few women along the way.

I couldn’t wait for them to get caught, but as you know this never happens in these movies that beg the viewers to side with the criminals.

The director Sergio Leone has set out to direct an epic movie and it really shows in the fabulous set and costume design that capture the look and feel of the Lower East Side of Manhattan in three different decades in a truly magnificent and cinematic way. I watched the 4-hour Extended Director’s Cut and don’t have any benchmark what the lengthy ’definitive’ cut of the movie adds the original theatrical cut but some tediously long scenes of endless dialogue and fading out lights.

I guess if the organised crime is your thing, you’ll be enjoying what Once Upon a Time in America for what it has to offer. Personally it seems like a totally wasted chance to tell a proper story with some actual human interest.

80s-o-meter: 32%

Total: 41%