Once Upon A Time In America Review

The third and final film in director Leone's notional trilogy of movies about the birth of modern America, which began with the iconic Once Upon A Time In The West and continued with A Fistful of Dynamite (which Leone later explained was originally to have been titled 'Once Upon A Time In Mexico').

Spanning 40-odd years, Once Upon A Time In America follows a clutch of Jewish immigrant gangsters from their days as excitable juvenile delinquents in Brooklyn, through the Prohibition era and into their dotage. Focussing principally on philosophical Noodles (De Niro) and his lethal partner Max (Woods), over the course of three and a half hours Leone charts their changing fortunes and fluctuating loyalties as first they have everything to play for, then everything to lose. En route there's jail, betrayal, opium and murder but through it all Noodles and Max remain bound by the dreams they shared as kids - dreams that sometimes sustain them, and other times threaten to destroy them.