Sergio Leone's gangster epic was at one stage chopped around a bit to get down to a shorter length. Whenever that happens there are critics who will always - always - write "well the full length version is best". I haven't seen shortened versions but to be honest wish I'd had - or that Leone himself had cut this more. Because it's a half masterpiece with brilliant stuff but also hideous moments.
I love the non-linear storytelling - going back and forth at the opening for instance, between gangsters looking for Robert de Niro, and de Niro in an opium den, then de Niro in 1967 coming home, the remembering hanging out with his friends. There are some fantastic Leone moments - that opening sequence, de Niro's return, the bursts of violence. Ennico Morricone's music score is one of his best, which makes it one of the best of all time.
You can't fault the casting either - Robert de Niro is terrific as Noodles, James Woods impresses as Maxie (even though he gets less screen time than I remembered) and there are memorable cameos from Burt Young, Joe Pesci and Treat Williams.
It's the treatment of women where this really stinks. Maybe I'm just an oversensitive snag, or maybe the people who praise this to the skies are inherently misogynistic men, but it was really uncomfortable the way every woman was a madonna or a whore. The Madonna side is taken up by Elizabeth McGovern (played as a child by Jennifer Connelly; both achingly beautiful) - the childhood dream of de Niro's, who spends most of her time looking wistful and beautiful and having this career we hear about but never see... so of course he rapes her in the back of a limo. (Clint Eastwood never raped in the Dollars films; Rod Steiger did in Duck You Sucker but at least the girl was a bitch and Steiger was an anti hero... Why give this act to the hero? Yeah okay character "he has to destroy her" but it was awful.)
The Whore roles are taken by the childhood friend of the boys who gives away sex for money and becomes a fat hooker; then there's Tuesday Weld, who gets turned on during a robbery and demands de Niro have sex with her and hit her - and then becomes Woods' mistress. Weld is very good in the role, incidentally - it's just such an awful part. I wish they'd just cut all the women out.
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