Every Once Upon A Time Movie Ranked Worst To Best

Having used Once Upon A Time In The West as the climax of a career playing with the myth of the Old West, Sergio Leone's final film turned the same eye to the story of organised crime in New York.

Based on The Hoods, a semi-autobiographical novel by real-life mobster Harry Grey, Leone changed the title to fit with his earlier classic and suggest they were two parts of the same examination of American identity. (A middle part of a possible "Once Upon A Time Trilogy" was instead retitled Duck, You Sucker!)

The movie, which stars Robert De Niro and James Woods as Jewish street kids who become Prohibition-era gangsters, is an ambitious, sprawling story across multiple time periods.

Tonino Delli Colli's evocative sepia-toned cinematography is visually powerful, the film has one of regular Leone composer Ennio Morricone's greatest ever scores, and both lead performances are excellent.

Once Upon A Time In America struggles under the weight of its own ambition, though. The film exists in multiple cuts, none of them Leone's preferred version (the director started out wanting to tell the story across two separate movies), and none of them quite managing a balance of telling the rich story while not seeming tediously indulgent.

Perhaps it would have always been better as a prestige miniseries, if only that was as popular a thing for movie directors in 1984 as it is today.