Once Upon a Time in America 1984

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: The film slips easily back and forth in time, dancing between the decades, often making the connection from one era to another solely by means of brilliant cuts that work like magic. Read more

Vincent Canby, New York Times: A lazily haullucinatory epic that means to encapsulate approximately 50 years of American social history into a single film. Read more

Lou Lumenick, New York Post: Adding 22 minutes only enhances Leone's brilliant saga of guilt and betrayal Read more

Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader: Every gesture is immediate, and every gesture seems eternal. Read more

Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times: 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. Read more

Richard Corliss, TIME Magazine: 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. Read more

Time Out: 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. Read more

David Fear, Time Out: Sergio Leone's languid, lovely and lengthy ode to Lower East Side mobsters (more specifically, mobster films) ... Read more

Variety Staff, Variety: A disappointment of considerable proportions. Read more