Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

All Critics (38) | Top Critics (9) | Fresh (38) | Rotten (5) | DVD (30)

Sergio Leone's languid, lovely and lengthy ode to Lower East Side mobsters (more specifically, mobster films) ...

November 20, 2012 Full Review

David Fear

Time Out New York

Top Critic

Leone is less interested in arousing an audience's easier emotions than in presenting, at a dispassionate distance, the horror of two men warily walking toward each other on a tightrope suspended above the snake pit of their , deepest compulsions.

April 12, 2011 Full Review

Richard Corliss

TIME Magazine

Top Critic

Every gesture is immediate, and every gesture seems eternal.

April 12, 2011 Full Review | Comment (1)

Dave Kehr

Chicago Reader

Top Critic

A disappointment of considerable proportions.

September 12, 2008 Full Review | Comments (2)

Variety Staff

Variety

Top Critic

While Leone's vision still has a magnificent sweep, the film finally subsides to an emotional core that is sombre, even elegiac, and which centres on a man who is bent and broken by time, and finally left with nothing but an impotent sadness.

January 26, 2006 Full Review | Comments (2)

Time Out

Top Critic

There are times when we don't understand exactly what is happening, but never a time when we don't feel confidence in the film's narrative.

October 23, 2004 Full Review | Comment (1)

Roger Ebert

Chicago Sun-Times

Top Critic

Here was a filmmaker who specialized in pure, blistering images, and this operatic earthiness just doesn't play as well as the horrifying, salacious stuff.

November 21, 2012 Full Review

Steve Macfarlane

Slant Magazine

Sad and vast yet compelling throughout, this remain Leone's most towering achievement.

April 17, 2012 Full Review

Film4

Handsomely mounted beyond a shadow of a doubt, but as the final statement in Leone's career, it mostly makes me think of how fantastic his Westerns were.

September 13, 2011 Full Review

Tim Brayton

Antagony & Ecstasy

While The Godfather delivers certainty and a comforting dramatic resolution, Once Upon A Time In America delivers a profound kind of mystery.

February 2, 2011 Full Review

Adam Smith

Empire Magazine

In a post The Godfather world, for Leone to even consider taking on an epically scoped New York gangster film took tremendous courage if not foolishness, Coppola had set the bar at an impossible height.

September 8, 2009 Full Review

Jordan Hiller

Bangitout.com

Spaghetti western master Sergio Leone turns his eye toward an American gangster epic spanning 50 years with surprisingly positive results.

December 27, 2007 Full Review

Joe Lozito

Big Picture Big Sound

Sergio Leone's cut is wonderful! Avoid the butchered theatrical version unleashed in the U.S.--I actually walked out on that indecipherable mess.

January 27, 2007

John A. Nesbit

Old School Reviews

Hugely complex, achingly sad and splendidly gorgeous.

July 22, 2006 Full Review

Jeffrey M. Anderson

Combustible Celluloid

Pure cinematic bliss.

June 4, 2006

Cole Smithey

ColeSmithey.com

Sergio Leone's swan song is an undisputed masterpeice, a self-reflexive crime-gangster epic with towering performances from De Niro and Tuesday Weld.

June 14, 2005 Full Review

Emanuel Levy

EmanuelLevy.Com

Haunting, thematically complex.

May 4, 2005 Full Review

Nick Schager

Lessons of Darkness

• 1. Sharkey: You ever think of setting yourselves up in business? All those trucks used to haul liquor, soon be selling them for nothing. I'm talking about hundreds of vehicles controlled by a national organization. And supported by a powerful union headed by Jimmy. Whatever you ask, there's no way he can turn you down.
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)
• 1. Cockeye: Newspaper guys never know what the fuck they want.
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)
• 1. Young Peggy: You better stop squeezing me or I'm gonna poop in my pants!
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)
• 1. Young Noodles: You'll put up and you'll shut up! You hear nothing, and you see nothing! Just like you did for Bugsy!
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)
• 1. Max: Being inside can change you. I'd already made the deal with Frankie to get rid of Joe. With a man like Frankie Minaldi you don't say yes, and then no. I could not take the chance that you'd change your mind. You understand.
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)
• 1. Carol: He laughs at you. He makes fun of you. He says Eve has got you by the balls. Every time you walk past this place, you shit in your pants. You'd do anything for the cops to pick you up, so you wouldn't have to do this. Well then, do it. Do it! Put him in jail. Put him in jail. Not long, just long enough so he can get the idea out of his mind. If you can't stand being away from him, put yourself there too. Better off than being dead. You know what to do. And if you don't, I will.
  – Submitted by Adam O (49 days ago)

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