Day 129: Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Movie #82 – Once Upon a Time in America (1984) - 229 min, cert 18.

David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson (Robert De Niro) was a racketeer in New York during the Prohibition, but flees for his life when the rest of his gang is wiped out. He is forced to return some 30 years later when some of the ghosts from his old life resurface.

Well it certainly isn’t anywhere near as good as The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, but neither is it as bad as Once Upon a Time in the West, De Niro’s performance alone would ensure that. At a ludicrous 3 hours 49 minutes, it is way, way too long. The action takes place during three quite separate periods in Noodles’ life. First as a young teenager growing up in Brooklyn, at the end of which he stabs a policeman and goes to prison. The next period is when he comes out of prison as an adult, and the final period is when he returns to Brooklyn after his self-imposed exile. The movie has a tendency to jump about a bit between the time periods, which I found a little hard to follow at times, but maybe I was just getting bored and wasn’t willing to concentrate enough on the plot.

De Niro is excellent, as always, and James Woods does a good turn as his accomplice. Joe Pesci’s appearance as a New York-Italian gangster is brief. He plays the role very well, but then he ought to since he never plays anything else!

Score – 5/10. It’s a reasonable film, and it certainly has its moments, but I’m not desperate to watch it again.

Next up is the classic war movie The Bridge on the River Kwai. This is another one of those movies which I’m not sure whether I’ve seen or not. I’ve certainly seen some if not most of it, but I may not have seen the whole thing.