Once Upon a Time in the West

Once Upon a Time in the West is a 1968 spaghetti western directed by Sergio Leone and starring Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson, Keenan Wynn, Woody Strode, Jack Elam, and Claudia Cardinale (the last surviving cast member). My one complaint is the length -this is just too long.

The New York Times says, "Granting the fact that it is quite bad, "Once Upon the Time in the West" is almost always interesting". Slant Magazine gives it 4 out of 4 stars and says, "Sergio Leone made a fistful of great films, but none better than 1968’s ode to the fading American frontier, Once Upon a Time in the West."

Roger Ebert opens with this:

Sergio Leone's "Once Upon a Time in the West" is a painstaking distillation of the style he made famous in the original three Clint Eastwood Westerns. There's the same eerie music; the same sweaty, ugly faces; the same rhythm of waiting and violence; the same attention to small details of Western life. There is also, unfortunately, Leone's inability to call it quits.

Empire Online concludes, "Nobody has made a better Western since. In fact, nobody has made a better Western, period." Rotten Tomatoes has a critics score of 98%.