Once Upon A Time In America

I really object to long films. Not because I get bored or start thinking about other things while I'm watching, but because before I watch a film I'm not sure that I'm going to like I can't bring myself to dedicate 3 or more hours of my life. It is for this reason that I have been putting off watching 'Once Upon a Time in America' for so long. This is a film which is the best part of 4 hours long, a film that has an intermission built into it, a film which I'd rather not bother with unless I know I'm going to like it.

I picked a lazy Friday evening on which I had nothing else to do, sat down with my dinner and stuck the DVD in the Xbox. 150 minutes later, when the first DVD ran out, I decided to give up and finish it off on Saturday morning. Rather than seeing an epic of American Mafia history that even dwarfed The Godfather, what I got was an excruciatingly slow-moving tale of growing up in a world where robberies, alcohol trafficking and prostitution are all the norm. This is a world where young lads steal money off of drunks in the street and queue up to have sex with under-aged prostitutes. Not a nice place to be. However rather than setting the scene and developing a story, the film gets bogged down with 'meaningful' shots and knowing looks between characters. They really needed to cut a lot of this supposedly atmospheric stuff out, because I don't think it adds any tension.

I felt that the film played out in a fairly unimaginative way. There are the usual highs and lows; but rather than taking me along for the ride, I felt very little for the characters and their stories. Without that I guess there isn't really much else.

This was a real disappointment for me. As a huge fan of De Niro and mafia films in general, I was hoping for a lot more. It also didn't help me cure my aversion to long films; it's going to be a long time before I sit down to another 240mins of cinema.