Once Upon a Time in the West is what you get when you take all the humor from Dollars trilogy. It has really good scenes but beginning where three men wait for a train for ten minutes is bit too much. At least nowadays when tempo of movies have changed faster. But then again it shows how boring waiting can be and it tells something all the time. It can be argued if that something is worth of ten minutes.
Movie lacks Clint Eastwood's charisma. Charles Bronson is not bad but he is bit too one dimensional. Other main characters do better job. Jason Robards is actually really good as Cheyenne. Bronson's character's motivations are bit hard to grasp. Revenge is understandable but every thing else feels it is there to get cool and interesting scenes. Others feel more like real people.
I can understand why some people rate this as best western or even best movie ever made. I would agree with first part if Bronson's character didn't have so many problems. It is like his character is in wrong movie. Rest of the movie tells how railroads change lawless frontier and you have this ultra cool character who leaves himself to be killed knowing he won't be killed because this is his story. I wouldn't have noticed that in lesser movie. But in this almost everything is thought of and everything characters do have meaning.
Now that I have seen four Sergio Leone's biggest westerns there is a question which I liked most. More I think about it I have to say Once Upon a Tine in the West is the best one. I can't find as big issues from Dollar's Trilogy but everything else is so much better in Once Upon a Time in the West that it is my favorite. If some wanted to know my favorite western before this I might have said The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. There might be better ones but I am not that into westerns so Once Upon a Time in the West is my favorite western at the moment. These were the westerns I can name from top of my head.
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