Once Upon a Time in America Movie Trailers and Reviews

Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

Starring: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Tuesday Weld, Treat Williams

Director: Sergio Leone

Release Date: June 1st, 1984

Synopsis: Epic, episodic, tale of the lives of a small group of New York City Jewish gangsters spanning over 40 years. Told mostly in flashbacks and flash-forwards, the movie centers on small-time hood David ‘Noodles’ Aaronson and his lifelong partners in crime; Max, Cockeye and Patsy and their friends from growing up in the rough Jewish neighborhood of New York’s Lower East Side in the 1920s, to the last years of Prohibition in the early 1930s, and then to the late 1960s where an elderly Noodles returns to New York after many years in hiding to look into the past.

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Once Upon a Time in America Movie Trailer

About the Movie

Once Upon a Time in America is a 1984 epic crime film directed and co-written by Sergio Leone and starring Robert De Niro and James Woods. The story chronicles the lives of Jewish ghetto youths who rise to prominence in New York City’s world of organized crime. The film explores themes of childhood friendships, love, lust, greed, betrayal, loss, broken relationships, and the rise of mobsters in American society.

The film premiered out of competition at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival in its original running time of 229 minutes (3 hours 49 minutes). However, against Leone’s wishes, it was released in the United States in a heavily edited and truncated version (almost ninety minutes shorter than the original version released in Europe). The short version eliminates the elaborate flashback structure of the film, instead placing all of the scenes in chronological order. Leone was reportedly heartbroken by the American cut, and never made another movie before his death in 1989, making this his final film.