It isn’t just the echoing moments that keep you absorbed. It’s those reverberant dreamland settings and Leone’s majestic, billowing sense of film movement; the images seem to come at you in waves of feeling.

Full Review | Sep 13, 2023

Once Upon a Time in America is a tremendous work that captures the animating ambition and sorrow at the heart of the American Dream.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2021

...sprawling subject matter that's employed to admittedly erratic yet often striking effect by Leone...

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Feb 16, 2021

...an epic of blinkered nostalgia.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Sep 10, 2020

The cinematographic style has evolved, but it's still unmistakably reminiscent of his earlier projects.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 6, 2020

A stratosphere-scraping citadel of cinema, nearly everything about Leone's last film - and greatest masterwork - speaks to the grand illusion of the American Dream.

Full Review | Oct 17, 2018

The movie's four hours long, but no one had the time to write a single real character.

Full Review | Jan 4, 2018

Complex gangster epic has strong violence, sex.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 10, 2017

This would-be epic schlep, dragging almost 50 years of chronology over a sluggish 140 minutes, is far too slight of text and ponderous of presentation to sustain more than nodding-off dramatic interest.

Full Review | May 5, 2017

Adding 22 minutes only enhances Leone's brilliant saga of guilt and betrayal

Full Review | Original Score: 4/4 | Apr 11, 2015

A tale of haunting introspection, unremitting power and potent symbolism. "America" ruminates on the corrosive effects of greed, violence, objectification and pain, and forces us to face despicable acts of a stand-in for our nation's worst impulses.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jan 1, 2015

While Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in America" is not quite the masterpiece that some make it out to be due to its excess, there are still plenty of things to recommend about it.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Sep 29, 2014

The film, photographed by Tonino Delli Colli, is striking to look at, especially its New York street scenes, which were shot in Manhattan, Montreal and a back lot near Rome. The acting is stunning.

Full Review | Apr 22, 2014

Just gasp at the scale, at the immaculate period reconstruction and at that incredible opening with its endlessly ringing phone.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 22, 2014

Sergio Leone explores the seamiest byways of urban Americana through the story of two gangsters who start their partnership as Brooklyn kids in 1921 and tragically end it in the late '60s.

Full Review | Apr 22, 2014

A work of tremendous intellectual depth and emotional range

Full Review | Original Score: 84/100 | Aug 8, 2013

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 21, 2012

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

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 20, 2012

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

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Apr 17, 2012

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.

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Sep 13, 2011