Once Upon a Time in the West

In-Progress tweet: The mustaches in Once Upon A Time In The West are...well, spectacular. HELLO I AM BAD YOU CAN TELL BY THE CAT ON MY FACE.

Actual FTRQ Review: EPIC  visual masterpiece. Could've been edited a bit. Bad men do good things for a woman. 4 stars

Follow-up: Leone, man. Leone. No one has EVER used the vastness of deserts to better effect. Ever. Every frame is a painting, every moment a composition. Today if a directors can do that, they fail at capturing people. Leone did that well too. Camera right in the face of an ugly, dirty, grubby desperado, perfectly framed with some massive, overwhelming landscape behind him. Close in on the eyes of a woman when she sees her man dead on a table. A lone figure riding out of a cloud of dust. Intimate shots of a steam engine but not the traditional wheel/piston shot. Everything was a character, from the cards on the table to the pipes that dripped water. The man knew how things should look, I tell you what.

His fatal flaw is that sometimes, when perfecting a still moment, or using time to build tension, he'd let it get away from him. If that happens once or twice, you only have an extra minute or two in your movie. 20 times and you have much, much more. Do not watch this as your first Leone movie. Work up to it. But it'll be worth it. It's deliberate, carefully paced and only occasionally does it "feel long."

Bone to pick: Not really a spaghetti western. It's really just a western.

Wish it was on Blu-ray. Still beautiful. Leone's work is like painting with moving pictures, I swear.


Once Upon a Time in the West at Netflix