Is Once Upon A Time in America any good?

Yes

Another yes.

Yes it is not.

I dunno.

if you want better thoughts click here
http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...ime+in+america
(no spoilers)

I haven't seen it since its original release.

At the time, I thought it was just as great a huge-scale gangster epic as anything by Coppola or Scorcese...

I might not think the same now. Like so many Italian epics, it's very slow... But Woods and DeNiro are excellent...

It's not good, it's great.

When you say Coppola, are you making reference to the incredibly slow paced Godfather trilogy? At least Scorcese keeps it moving fairly well and doesn't strive for a 3 hour running time. I'd say Once... is up there with the Godfather in terms of quality. Why I had never heard of the movie until I saw it at Target is something I just don't understand.

Once Upon a Time in America is one of the most underrated films ever, imo. Definitely a must see, if not a must buy.

When the movie was released in the US in 1984, Warner Brothers thought that the 229 minute length was excessive. They reedited the film, taking out about an hour and making it chronological. Apperently, what they released was unwatchable: it made no sense, characters appeared and disappeared seemingly at random, key expository dialogue and key scenes were removed etc. The movie was so carefully constructed that the inclusion of every scene in the original is essential to understand what's going on. Making even slight changes (let alone a major overhaul like WB did) would make the movie incoherent.

Because of this, the film has had an awful reputation here in the states. It flopped both in the theaters and critically. Then it faded from everyone's radar screen. Add the fact that it took WB so damn long (this was on of the more sought-after titles, IMO) to come out with a version of the film on DVD and it's not hard to see how many people haven't really heard of it.

Actually, they cut 90 minutes from the film. A tragedy.