Undeniably a masterpiece with so many beautiful moments and scenes but - and I'm sorry if this makes me sound like a philistine - but does it has to be so long? Dragging out Jason Robards' death for ever and ever, the elongated sequence between Henry Fonda and Claudia Cardinale in bed, and all those scenes on the train... they all surely could have been trimmed?
Some of it the length is a benefit - the drawn out suspenseful attack at the train station, the murder of the homesteaders. Charles Bronson is a fantastic Western hero, good as Eastwood would have been; Claudia Cardinale is perhaps the best looking heroine in Western history; Jason Robards adds some lively humour and Henry Fonda a strong villain (with solid support from sympathetic-yet-terrible Gabriele Ferzetti). It has one of the greatest musical scores in history and an all-time great reveal when we find out why Bronson has been after Fonda all this time.
Absolutely worth seeing but I'd be lying if I didn't admit it dragged for me every now and then.
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