Once Upon A Time In America (1984)

Movie Overview: What can I say about this movie, the casting crews and the director said it all. Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci, the most famous duo in the world, most of their movies were about Mafia, however, Raging Bull, the most famous Pesci movie out of all was about boxing, it was a bit better than Rocky. There was also James Woods, he wasn’t as famous as he was, but he was a big deal back then. The director Sergio Leone directed one of the most famous movie of all: The Good The Bad and The Ugly, also he directed a fistful of money also an excellent movie. This should be another typical mafia movie like Goodfellas, Billy Bath, Casino…

Plot Overview:

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. Written by Matthew Patay

Movie Review:

This was a pretty long movie, but somehow I felt short, I felt like I wanted more despite the movie was 4 hour long, It was 4 hour and it had an open-ending, that was pretty awesome. On the story aspect, It got great a motto to it, it was a movie about friendship, drugs, and betrayal… This movie got it all from great plot to fantastic theme, definitely a plus in my book. This isn’t a movie that I would allow a kid to watch because It filled with nudity and sexual contents, but we would expect this from a Mafia type movie. The acting was beautiful, nearly all of them played characters that spanned from young till elder, they didn’t try to hard to emulated their characters to the max, so the results were no one toppled the other. The cinematography was just perfect, bring to us that familiar Mafia feelings that was clinched to our soul, that Godfathers-Scarface feeling of the 80’s, that was a glory time for Mafia movie, but later on Spielberg thrown in Jurassic Park, and great story line became a small thing in the Hollywood world.

My favorite scenes would be all of the key scenes of the movie, the scenes that created a foundation to the movie. My first choice would be when the little boy got shot whom was a friend of Robert De Niro character, Noodle, now after that a reason was generated, that was why Noodles didn’t like the police very much, it created a block in people mind, where they would support Noodle all the way. My second choice would be the scene where Noodles got out of jail, and was greeted by his fellas which happened in one his friend’s restaurant. Out of 5, 1 was able to be successful and I felt ready good about him, he was rich but he didn’t abandoned his friends. the rest, they still do illegal stuff, but won’t get the successful friend one involved, that was the meaning of true friendship, no matter what you do do not force your friends into anything. The twist near the end was nice, break the whole ideas of the movie apart. This is a pretty long movie, I recommended watching it with intermissions if you ever get your hand one one.