I was flipping through the television stations, and I came across the beginning of a movie I had never heard of. It looked like one of those older Western Movies, and I just had happened to stumble across it. It was 3am in the morning, and nothing else was on, so I decided to give it a try. It was showing on AMC, so there were no commercial interruptions, and I was thinking that I was in the mood for a good Western. Looking back on that early morning decision, I am soooooooo glad that I decided to go ahead and stay up late. What proceeded to unfold in front of my eyes, was the best movie that I have ever seen.

When you sit back, as a moviewatcher, and try and consider what the best movies that you have ever seen are, a couple of main categories come to mind. First of all, it has to grab your attention, and you must be interested in the plot-line. But, most importantly you have to care about the characters. If you do not care about the hero or the villain, then you can never really enjoy the movie. In order for this to happen, it is up to the movie to draw you in. And then once the movie has you, it then must tantalize you with images and storyline. Now, this movie did that and much, much more.

"Once Upon A Time In The West", stars Henry Fonda and Charles Bronson, as the two main characters. The story revolves are these two characters, and a short interaction that they have in the beginning of the movie. Then throughout the movie, they end up looking for each other. The story takes place in a town that is trying to spring up around where the railroad is starting to come through. The railroads has not yet spanned across the entire country yet, and the people involved in this story are attempting to take full advantage of the profits that can come from being involved in the whole process.

Fonda plays an outlaw who has no positive qualities, but rather resembles the most disliked qualities that any villain can assume. He has many tendencies throughout the movie that show just how he has become so twisted, and what made him that way. Bronson, in his first real starring role, is a long-ways from his present-day action flick. In this one, he is a quiet out-of-towner, who just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Now the two of them must face off to decide the fate of a town, the fate of the woman that they both admire, and their own destinies at the same time.

The woman is played by Claudia Cardinale, who brings a great beauty to the screen. She has come to the west to find her family, but all she finds instead is a trail of death. Fonda's character is out to kill her to end the story, and Bronson teams up with a notorious desperado to serve as her only source of protection. The mysterious character that Bronson plays lends itself well to the relationship that he, the desperado, and Jill (Cadinale) end up playing. In a world where a woman has no rights, and is not looked upon as a strong sense of character, she is on her own in a Western town that looks to be taken over by Fonda's characters boss. Working for the railroad, they want to own everything that it passes through, and that includes the land which Jill owns now. It is up to the mysterious Harmonica playing man, and another man who has been evil his entire life, to stand in the way of Frank taking out Jill and everything she stands for.

Sergio Leone directed this film about what the West looked like before it was completely colonized. Filmed in 1968, the movie is epic in the scenery that it shows, and immense in everything that it depicts. The rolling hills, and vast land that is surveyed in the film, shows exactly what it must have been like to live back then, and we see exactly what it took to construct a town. The acting in this movie is as good as it gets, with a surprise performance from an unlikely source. Starring, but not credited in the film, is "silence." Now when I say silence, I mean that there were parts of the movie that depended not just on the character talking or doing anything, but on the movie unfolding in front of us. To do this, we are treated with only the sounds that the prairies would make, and it actually zeros in at times to a fly, to the sounds a windmill makes, and even to the wind brushing through a wheat-field.

This is one of the movies that can actually change your entire view of cinema in one swoop. There are no down-sides to this movie, as we see the vision that Sergio Leone saw of what our Old West was like. He nails it right down to the people working on the railroad, and showed just how important it was for people to stand up for themselves in a time of tycoons trying to take over everything. Once Upon A Time in The West is a rare time where all of the elements of film come together in something that can go by no other name than "masterpiece." The character depth is what tipped me off to this film being so great. In the opening sequence, we are treated to a drawn-out event of assassins waiting for a train. And waiting. For 8 minutes, we just see their mannerisms, and how they interact with their environment. No talking, just evolving from scene to scene. The movie shows us just what a great film can look like, and develops even the smallest character or storyline for us to enjoy.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone that loves a good western, and to anyone that is in need of a great movie. I cannot overestimate just how good this movie is, and I would not be doing it justice, if I actually said it could all fit into a review. Rent or purchase the wide-screen format of this film, and sit down to an event of your life. You will truly thank me upon watching this masterpiece of the theater.





Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older