Lists
- ranked 63 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (2003)
- ranked 72 in Chicago Tribune 100 Best Films of the Century
- ranked 83 in Empire 100 Greatest Movies (1999)
- ranked 92 in Empire 500 Greatest Movies (2008)
- ranked 115 in The IMDb Top 250
- ranked 137 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (August 2005)
- ranked 147 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (March 2006)
- ranked 167 in They Shoot Pictures, Don't They? 1000 Greatest Films (December 2006)
- one of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die
- one of Guardian 1,000 films to see before you die
It's hard not to ask, when seeing the acclaim piled on sprawling epics like Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America, is it really a fair comparison? The story -- of two young men from their youth, to their glory days as prohibition bootleggers, to their twilight years -- is intricate and compelling.
But it's also four hours long: it's the sort of story that now would appear in a short series on HBO or Netflix. Insofar as it is something special by the standard of cinema (its scope simply cannot be encompassed in 90 or 120 minutes), binge-watching television is in its ascendancy, and by that measure it feels positively short.
Still, it's wonderfully paced, and successful as a portrait both of the characters and the times they lived through.