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Once Upon a Time in America

1984

Sergio Leone

Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Tuesday Weld ...

8.3

58,596

Drama Ex-gangster David Aaronson (Robert DeNiro) is drawn back to New York City after years of being in hiding, despite his vow to never return after the deaths of his friends in the lower East Side. David reflects back on his life, spanning five decades of major American revolutions starting in the 1920s, when he first began his career in organized crime. As David pieces together his past he discovers new truths about his friends' deaths.

	Author	Review
United States	Douglas Pratt The Hollywood Reporter	"As one would expect from Leone, the film is a brilliant stylistic accomplishment"	POS
United States	Vincent Canby The New York Times	"A lazily haullucinatory epic that means to encapsulate approximately 50 years of American social history into a single film"	NEU
United States	Dave Kehr Chicago Reader	"A superb popular entertainment: it's a funny, rousing, brilliant piece of work"	POS
United Kingdom	Adam Smith Empire	"Melancholy gangster film, expertly played and heartbreakingly rendered (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS
United States	Roger Ebert rogerebert.com	"The film moves back and forth in a tapestry of episodes, which all fit together into an emotional whole (…) Rating: ★★★★ (out of 4)"	POS
Ireland	Donald Clarke Irish Times	"Leone’s 1984 gangster epic is offensively sexist and a bit of a narrative mess. But the lush imagery still boggles the eye, and Ennio Morricone’s seductive score could be his most beautiful (…) Rating: ★★★ (out of 5)"	NEU
United States	Steve Macfarlane Slant	"For all its details, its lushness of mood and feeling, the film remains stubbornly basic in its grand design, and thus a rare breed of classic-style studio epic (…) Rating: ★★½ (out of 4)"	NEU
United States	Keith Phipps AV Club	"His fantasia of gangland themes and images barely works by the standards of a gangster film, but succeeds brilliantly by those of epic poetry (...) The finer points of character and plot sometimes get lost"	NEU
United Kingdom	Radio Times	"An extraordinary crime drama (…) Rating: ★★★★★ (out of 5)"	POS

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