Review of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) by Jay H — 04 Nov 2018

My second Leone film, and I expected to see another Western masterpiece, with a gorgeous Morricone score, stunning cinematography, and incredible stand off's, stares & shooting scenes, but that is more serious, and not as cool as, than The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, and that's almost what I got. But what I didn't expect to see is one of the best, and most profound, contemplative movies ever made!

Signifying the end of the Old West, Sergio Leone loaded his near-three-hour sprawling epic with symbols. The symbolism is seen in almost every aspect of the movie; the setting, the costumes, the music, and most importantly, the characters. In fact, each character stand for an iconographic Western role. But Leone did humanize them through his melodrama, and the result is that all the characters became some of the most interesting and compelling characters ever!

What amazed me is how rich the plot seems despite its simplicity. And as convoluted as the narrative sounds, the movie never lost me. That's simply because the story is actually pretty simple, but the sophisticated themes and symbolic characters gave it mythic feeling.

Aside from its remarkable opening scene, which became one of my all-time favorites, I found the first hour of unbearably tedious! I usually don't mind watching movies with a deliberate pace, but almost the entire first hour gave us nothing but glances of each of the interesting characters that I totally invested in afterwards. The extremely strong, compelling, sympathetic, interesting and memorable characters portrayed by a spectacular charismatic cast definitely made me forget how bored I was during the first act, but also definitely didn't make me forget that I was about to fall asleep a couple of times!

(8.5/10).