 STAR RATINGS EXPLAINED |
 Classic
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 Excellent
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 Fair
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 Tragic
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| FILM DETAILS | Certificate
15 | | Cast
Henry Fonda
Claudia Cardinale
Charles Bronson
Jason Robards
Gabriele Ferzetti. | | Directors
Sergio Leone. | | Screenwriters
Sergio Donati
Sergio Leone. | | Running Time
168 minutes |
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Once Upon A Time in the West (15) Plot
A mysterious stranger with a harmonica joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the railroad in this long frontier epic. Mysterious pasts and the strength of loyalties is explored amid lightning fast gun battles and stylish vistas. Review
After the escalating grandiosity of the three Clint Eastwood/Man With No Name "dollars" Westerns, Sergio Leone went all out for scale in this monumental movie. It opens with a riff on High Noon as three expressive gunmen - Woody Strode, Jack Elam and Al Mulock - wait for a train, bothered by a drip of water and a buzzing fly, and Leone stretches out what ought to be dead screen time into an operatic crescendo of suspense (scored by the great Ennio Morricone) that pays off when a granite-faced Bronson, stepping into the Eastwood No-Name role as the vengeance-seeking Harmonica, arrives in a shimmering haze to face down the killers in a few brief, eventful seconds.
As much a meditation on the Western itself as it is an action movie rooted in American history, this casts an iconic Henry Fonda to trash his Wyatt Earp image as Frank, the blue-eyed killer who cheerfully slaughters an entire frontier family down to an angelic boy child but is well aware that his partnership with a crippled railroad tycoon is also an abandonment of his outlaw lifestyle and an admission that his times are over.
It's the most political of Leone's oat operas, indicting the corrupt railroad which, as it bulldozes across the landscape, displacing innocent people and hiring outlaw flunkeys to shift inconvenient settlers who won't unsettle easily. Rapaciously capitalist civilisation taints the wide open spaces, but the plot follows Bronson's obsessive quest to bring down Fonda, the sadist who hanged his brother, while widow Cardinale tries to fend off the railroad tycoons and bandido Robards just wants to be left in peace.
With its amazing widescreen compositions and epic running time, this Western truly wins points for length and width. Verdict
Leone showed with Once Upon A Time In The West that it was possible to honour the Western tradition while raising the artistic bar to such a level that nobody has made a better Western since. In fact, nobody has made a better Western, period.
Reviewer: Kim Newman
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Average user rating for Once Upon A Time in the West
| A MASTERPIECE | | | Great movie ... Read More
| | | shady_88 About me | | 17:29, 19 December 2009 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Amazing use of sound. | | | I have loved this film for years and finally went to the cinema to see it recently at the Tyneside cinema in Newcastle. This film plays out like an opera, each scene develops and moves on. The story is told and then it all resolves at the end. Amazing film making. ... Read More
| | | RustNS About me | | 18:56, 18 September 2009 | Report This Post | |
| | | | | | Poorly paced and at times absurd ... Read More
| | | vermin101 About me | | 05:28, 13 September 2009 | Report This Post | |
| | | | | | Poorly paced and at times absurd ... Read More
| | | vermin101 About me | | 05:28, 13 September 2009 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Bang Bang, You're Dead | | | Western. It is not a genre, it is a film.
And it is this film. Unbeatable ... Read More
| | | blaud About me | | 13:45, 02 April 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Sorry i don't get it | | | I know as peopleread this review they will be outraged at my "naive" view on this film but i really do belive this film is one ofthe most overated films ever made. Good points; the opening three way shoot out scene is a brilliant work of suspense. Second, Henry Fonda is truly menacing and is a great bad guy. But it's the bad points that make this film 2 stars.
- The pace of it is unbelievably slow and uningaging. I can handle slow, meditative films (i love the godfather with a passio... Read More
| | | xboyo123 About me | | 20:10, 17 March 2008 | Report This Post | |
| | | | | | The best western ever made. This is a real cinematic event, not to be missed. Sit back and lose yourself in it; utterly beautiful amd mesmerising. ... Read More
| | | Duffski About me | | 22:03, 06 December 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | | | brilliant ... Read More
| | | bobbyperu About me | | 08:57, 23 October 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | The greatest western of all time | | | Magnificent, stunning, beautiful. Once Upon a Time in the West shows that Leone was the only true Western director. One of the greatest films of all time. ... Read More
| | | jamdodge1 About me | | 21:17, 15 May 2007 | Report This Post | |
| | | | Once Upon A Time In The West | | | Once Upon A Time is just simple the most sublime Western ever made. This film will be Leone's legacy for generations to come. ... Read More
| | | mafyou About me | | 19:47, 03 November 2006 | Report This Post | |
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