ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT (US/Italy - 1984/2012) Directed by Sergio Leone. Written by Leonardo Benvenuti, Piero De Bernardi, Enrico Medioli, Franco Arcalli, Franco Ferrini, Sergio Leone, and Stuart Kaminsky. Cast: Robert De Niro, James Woods, Elizabeth McGovern, Treat Williams, Joe Pesci, Burt Young, Louise Fletcher, Tuesday Weld, Danny Aiello, Richard Bright, James Hayden, William Forsythe, Darlanne Fluegel, Larry Rapp, Richard Foronjy, James Russo, Amy Ryder, Jennifer Connelly, Scott Tiler, Rusty Jacobs, Brian Bloom, Noah Moazezi, Adrian Curran, Mike Monetti, Mario Brega, Robert Harper, Olga Karlatos, Arnon Milchan, Frank Gio, Paul Herman. (R, 251 mins)
SPOILERS: This review assumes you've seen ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. It's probably a safe bet that we'll never see a definitive, last-word version of Sergio Leone's final masterpiece ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. Known for his legendary spaghetti westerns that made Clint Eastwood an international star, Leone set out to make the ultimate gangster film and in many ways, he succeeded. Though he made some uncredited contributions to Tonino Valerii's comedic western MY NAME IS NOBODY (1973) and Damiano Damiani's semi-sequel A GENIUS, TWO FRIENDS AND AN IDIOT (1975), Leone hadn't directed a film since 1971's DUCK, YOU SUCKER!, aka A FISTFUL OF DYNAMITE, and he spent the better part of the 1970s prepping ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, based on Harry Grey's novel The Hoods. The rights to The Hoods were initially purchased by DARK SHADOWS creator Dan Curtis, who was nursing ambitions of breaking out of TV horror and making a name for himself on the big screen. Leone desperately wanted the rights to Grey's book, prompting his then-producer Alberto Grimaldi to cut a deal that saw Curtis signing over the film rights to The Hoods to Grimaldi and Leone in exchange for Grimaldi ghost-producing Curtis' 1976 film BURNT OFFERINGS. With the rights secured, Leone and a committee of screenwriters (among them frequent Dario Argento collaborator Franco Ferrini) began work on his vision of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, though it ultimately didn't begin shooting until June 1982. By that time, Grimaldi was no longer in the picture and Leone finally got the project going through Israeli producer Arnon Milchan, who was just making a name for himself by producing Martin Scorsese's THE KING OF COMEDY (1983) and would eventually go on to form his Regency Enterprises production company and become a major Hollywood player, bankrolling films like Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), Michael Mann's HEAT (1995), David Fincher's FIGHT CLUB (1999), and Steve McQueen's 12 YEARS A SLAVE (2013).
Sergio Leone (1929-1989)
Shooting wrapped in April 1983 and Leone spent over a year editing the footage. His initial, very rough cut ran around ten hours. He cut it down to six, and eventually down to 269 minutes. Still not satisfied, his official version screened at the 1984 Cannes Film Festival, with a running time of 229 minutes. While the film and its majestic Ennio Morricone score were lauded at Cannes--but not winning any awards as it was screened out of competition--US distributor The Ladd Company, a division of Warner Bros., had already decided American audiences weren't seeing the 229-minute cut. Against Leone's wishes (Milchan, then new to the ways of Hollywood, has admitted "I should've fought harder"), The Ladd Company had assigned in-house editor Zach Staenberg to completely recut the film, jettisoning the vital flashback structure and putting the scenes in chronological order. Under orders from his bosses, Staenberg (often dismissively referred to by Leone fans and co-star James Woods as "the guy who edited POLICE ACADEMY," but he did go on to win an Oscar for his work on THE MATRIX, and in his defense, he was just doing what he was told to do) took Leone's film from 229 minutes down to 139 minutes, and that was the version released in US theaters on June 1, 1984. Needless to say, it was a disaster critically and commercially, with Ladd/Warner yanking it from theaters after two weeks following a barrage of negative press from major film critics who just saw the superior long version at Cannes less than a month earlier. Eventually, The Ladd Company relented and gave Leone's cut a very limited release (at 227 minutes, more on that in a bit) before it debuted on VHS and cable in 1985, but by then, the damage was done. Leone was heartbroken over the treatment given to his dream project in the US, and his health began to rapidly decline. The stress of the arduous shoot and the resulting massacre in the editing room took years off of his life, and he died in 1989 at just 59, looking at least a decade older. ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA was his final film.
Leone and his cast at Cannes in 1984
In the US, the long version went from 227 minutes back to Leone's "official" 229 minutes over the years, reinstating some snipped shots from a pair of rape scenes--one with Robert De Niro and Tuesday Weld, and an especially graphic one with De Niro and Elizabeth McGovern--that were trimmed so the long version could secure an R rating. The 139-minute version, released on VHS and shown on cable in the mid '80s, is now rightfully regarded as one of the most shameful instances of a studio cluelessly destroying a filmmaker's vision. It's since been buried in the Warner vaults, presumably never to be seen again, though it would be interesting to view again for curiosity's sake. Even in its "official" 229-minute form, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA leaves questions unanswered. Given the argument that the 1968 portions of the film are a dream being experienced by Jewish mobster Noodles (De Niro) in an opium den in 1933, it's possible that clarity was never meant to be had with the film. Perhaps it's hazy and incomplete by design. That still doesn't explain other mysteries of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, like the significance of Frankie Minaldi (Joe Pesci) turning up in the lobby of a hospital long after his portion of the story is over, unseen by Noodles and Max as they get off an elevator and never seen or referenced in the film again, unless something in Leone's earlier rough cuts showed that he has a role in the ill-conceived Federal Reserve robbery that proves to be the gang's undoing or he's an unseen power player pulling the strings of union leader Jimmy O'Donnell (Treat Williams). As unwieldy and wandering as dreams can often be, there will never be definitive answers for a lot of what happens in ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA, much like there can never be a definitive version. No matter how much gets put back in, the enigmatic elements remain. We're watching--presumably--the dreaming, drugged-out mind of a man consumed by guilt, who's just ratted on his friends and inadvertently gotten them killed. It's never going to make perfect sense.
The 251-minute restoration has been marketed as an "extended director's cut," but Leone's original pre-release version ran 269 minutes before he settled on the 229-minute Cannes 1984 cut. With Martin Scorsese throwing his weight behind the project, the restoration involved Leone's family members and various collaborators, though 18 minutes of footage was apparently tangled in rights issues and it would seem that the 251-minute version finds the film once again released in a compromised state (perhaps the real explanation is that the still-missing 18 minutes aren't salvageable?). Whether that full 269-minute version will ever see reassembly is still up in the air. The six additional scenes came from a workprint source, and when the "director's cut" played at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and was released on Blu-ray in Italy later that year, the image quality didn't win it any praise. It's been cleaned up significantly in the ensuing two years, but the added scenes still stick out like a sore thumb. Some look better than others, especially later on, but the first addition--Noodles encountering a cemetery director (Louise Fletcher, who was completely excised from all previous versions) when he visits the mausoleum where Max (Woods), Cockeye (William Forsythe), and Patsy (James Hayden, who died of a heroin overdose in November 1983, eight months before the film's release) are interred--looks the worst, by far. Faded and scratchy, it's hard to imagine what this looked like before it was cleaned up, but Fletcher's scene is usually cited as the most famous of the "lost" sequences, even though she doesn't really have much to do. Other than a few minutes of screen time for the ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST Best Actress Oscar winner, the biggest significance of this scene comes near its end when Noodles spots a black car that's following him, giving him more evidence that after a 35-year self-imposed exile, the ghosts of his past have finally caught up to him. Of the five other restored scenes--including a heated 1968 meeting between Max-as-"Secretary Bailey" and O'Donnell, Noodles getting defensive when a Jewish chauffeur (played by Milchan) disapproves of his lifestyle, and an additional scene after Noodles drives the car into the water after the gang pulls off the Detroit diamond robbery for Frankie and his brother Joe (Burt Young)--the most important gives us a much more thorough introduction to Eve (Darlanne Fluegel), Noodles' girlfriend in 1933, a prostitute with whom he took up after his brutal rape of love-of-his-life Deborah (McGovern), finally driving her away for good. In the 229-minute cut, Eve more or less appears and we can easily figure out that she's Noodles' girlfriend, and we didn't really need background on her to ascertain that, but by reinstating their introduction, the viewer gets a better read on their relationship and how Noodles still isn't over Deborah.
All of the scenes explain things in some way, but given the inherently enigmatic and impenetrable nature of the film and its construction, less can be more. Not less as in "139 minutes," but nothing in these additional 22 minutes makes ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA necessarily better, nor do they make anything worse. It's also a different Blu-ray transfer than Warner's previous release of the 229-minute cut, darker and with a more muted color palette. There are moments where it doesn't look all that great, and there's been chatter online--which I don't really buy--that the whole transfer was degraded to more closely match the inferior quality of the added scenes. While devoted fans of Leone and the film will want to see this cut, I'm not sure it surpasses the 229-minute version, which had a pretty good if not demo-quality HD transfer. At any rate, it's not a "director's cut." It's a big step toward the restoration of the 269-minute cut, but Leone more or less dismissed that as a definitive edition when he cut it down to 229 minutes and signed off on it. Maybe his feelings changed before his death and maybe he'd prefer the 269-minute version now and be cool with settling for this 251-minute cut instead, but he's not here to speak for himself, and much like the intricacies and the specifics of the film's deliberately ambiguous plot, we'll simply never know.
The two-disc edition of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT lists "theatrical cut" as the second disc. This is not the 139-minute US theatrical cut--it's simply the 229-minute "official" version that you probably already own if you're a fan. While everyone is likely in agreement that the 139-minute Zach Staenberg cut is an abomination, it would be interesting to watch, much like Universal's botched, shelved "Love Conquers All" cut that Criterion included in their BRAZIL box set. Why not include it for the sake of completist fans? Don't bury it. Don't deny its existence. Present it as a cautionary tale of studio meddling gone horribly awry. Hell, get Staenberg to do a commentary over it. Can you imagine the stories he's got about hapless execs telling him to make those nonsensical cuts and re-edits? That's a missed opportunity. Fortunately, if you already have the 229-minute version, ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA: EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT is also available on its own in a single-disc edition on both Blu-ray and DVD.
Treat Williams, William Forsythe, James Woods, and Robert De Niro
at the New York Film Festival screening of ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA:
EXTENDED DIRECTOR'S CUT in September 2014.
The story of the West Memphis Three, accused of the ritualistic murder of three little boys in West Memphis, AR, has been told in many ways since the horrific events of the summer of 1993. Books, countless investigative pieces, TV news profiles, and most notably, four documentaries--Bruce Sinofsky and Joe Berlinger's PARADISE LOST trilogy and the Peter Jackson-produced WEST OF MEMPHIS--seem to have covered the story from every possible angle. With that in mind, it seems odd to make a dramatization of the events now and odder still that it's directed by the great Egyptian-born Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan (EXOTICA). Egoyan's been in a slump for going on a decade now, with only 2008's ADORATION showing signs of the Egoyan of old: 2005's WHERE THE TRUTH LIES and 2009's CHLOE are easily his weakest films, with CHLOE in particular looking like a laughably dated erotic thriller that was found sealed in a film canister marked "1995." Egoyan's been spending a lot of his time in recent years making short films and documentaries, so it's likely that TRUTH and CHLOE were just mercenary director-for-hire gigs that provided a financial cushion. Unfortunately, DEVIL'S KNOT, based on Mara Leveritt's 2002 true-crime account of the same name, falls into the same category. Other than some familiar Egoyan actors like Bruce Greenwood and Elias Koteas, and some shots early on that recall the remorseful sense of melancholy of Egoyan's 1997 masterpiece THE SWEET HEREAFTER, DEVIL'S KNOT takes the story of the West Memphis Three and turns it into a perfunctory, workmanlike courtroom drama that offers no new perspective on the case other than to belatedly suggest that the father of one victim and the stepfather of another may have been involved in the murders. Despite some early signs that Egoyan might take a David Fincher/ZODIAC approach to examining the story, it doesn't take long to devolve into rote storytelling that anyone familiar with the case already knows, laid out in thoroughly by-the-numbers fashion by the screenwriting team of Paul Harris Boardman and SINISTER director Scott Derrickson, whose previous credits together include HELLRAISER: INFERNO, URBAN LEGENDS: FINAL CUT and THE EXORCISM OF EMILY ROSE. With that pedigree, it's pretty obvious Egoyan's just punching a clock on this one.
All the expected story elements are here: the parents demanding revenge, the town, the lazy police, and a stone-walling judge going into full-on, witch-hunt, "Satanic panic" mode. They're all in a frothing-at-the-mouth quest to pin the murders on a trio of social outcasts who had an interest in the heavy metal and the occult and a ringleader in Damien Echols (played here by James Hamrick) who was a loner from a broken home who dressed in black and was simply deemed "weird." The police work in this case was horribly shoddy, with one suspect, Jessie Misskelley, Jr (Kristopher Higgins), obviously mentally incompetent and thought to be "mildly retarded," coerced into confessing to the murders with wrong timelines and details completely inconsistent with the crime scene, but the cops ran with it anyway. Since these details, and the eventual Alford Plea release of the three convicted murderers in 2011 are old news, a lot of DEVIL'S KNOT focuses on the grieving Pam Hobbs (Reese Witherspoon), the mother of victim Stevie Branch, and her late discovery of Stevie's pocket knife in a box kept by her husband Terry (Alessandro Nivola). This, along with another knife that was given to Sinofsky and Berlinger (who briefly appear as themselves) by John Mark Byers (a hammy Kevin Durand), the father of victim Christopher Byers, and the police department's botched handling of a bloodied African-American man who was found in the ladies' room of a fast-food restaurant the night of the murders, would appear to indicate DEVIL'S KNOT's agenda in probing deeper into the case. If Egoyan was really interested in that, why not pursue Terry Hobbs and John Mark Byers for a documentary? Why devote time to defense team investigator Ron Lax (a miscast Colin Firth, struggling with a Southern accent) moping around after his wife (a one-scene drop-in by Amy Ryan) serves him with divorce papers? Who gives a shit about Ron Lax's failed marriage? This is the kind of film where the judge decrees to a packed courtroom that Misskelley will be tried separately from the others, but Lax still has to immediately lean over to his assistant and whisper "Separate trials...Jessie's gonna be tried on his own" just in case the audience is having trouble keeping up. With Oscar-winners Firth and Witherspoon onboard, and with justice for the West Memphis Three a longtime cause for many in the entertainment industry, DEVIL'S KNOT looks suspiciously like transparent Weinstein Company awards bait, but this time it backfired. The film got such a unanimously negative response at the 2013 Toronto Film Festival that Harvey Weinstein unloaded it on RLJ Entertainment, who rolled it out on VOD and a handful of screens a month before its DVD/Blu-ray debut. It's a strangely appropriate burial for such a shallow endeavor that barely scratches the surface as it treads down a path that's already been explored in much more insightful detail by others. (Unrated, 114 mins) IN THE BLOOD (US/UK - 2014)
Steven Soderbergh's HAYWIRE arrived with much publicity and positive reviews in early 2012 as the starring debut of former MMA sensation Gina Carano. It had a unusually highbrow supporting cast for such action fare and promised old-school fight scenes and delivered, but mainstream audiences weren't especially taken with Carano or with Soderbergh's directing style, which turned HAYWIRE into more or less an MMA arthouse film. Nevertheless, while it's a fixture in DVD bargain bins at a retailer near you and already little more than a footnote in Soderbergh's filmography, it has a minor cult following and Carano's future as a B-level DTV action star seemed inevitable. After a supporting role in last year's FAST & FURIOUS 6, she's back with the rather pedestrian IN THE BLOOD. For all the complaints action fans had about Soderbergh's artsy-fartsy pretensions with HAYWIRE, at least he made the action sequences count. Here, sometime hack actor-turned-fulltime hack director John Stockwell weighs things down with too many characters with too many subplots and not enough Carano ass-kicking. Shot in Puerto Rico, the first half-hour of IN THE BLOOD looks like a typical Stockwell effort, demonstrating his endless fascination with exotic, scenic tourist destinations (since 2002, he's also made BLUE CRUSH, INTO THE BLUE, TURISTAS, and DARK TIDE) as recovering heroin addicts and newlyweds Ava (Carano) and Derek Grant (Cam Gigandet) honeymoon in the Caribbean. They met in rehab--she came from the wrong side of the tracks and saw her father (Stephen Lang in flashbacks) murdered by drug dealers, he's the scion of a wealthy family whose asshole father (Treat Willliams) disapproves of Ava and tries to bully Derek into signing a pre-nup. While at a restaurant, Ava and Derek meet affable local Manny (Ismael Cruz Cordova) who talks them into a zip-lining excursion. While careening down the aptly-named "Widowmaker," Derek's line snaps and he plummets into the forest below. The medics won't let Ava ride in the ambulance and no hospital in town has any record of Derek being brought in. The local cops, led by the predictably useless chief (Luis Guzman), and her sneering father-in-law think she staged a kidnapping, or even killed him to gain access to the family's wealth. So, of course, under the tutelage of her father, she's been schooled in the ways of MMA (much to the surprise of Derek during an early nightclub skirmish), and she becomes an inevitable one-woman wrecking crew in the quest to find her missing husband.
Once Stockwell finally gets to the action, IN THE BLOOD has its moments, but they're few and far between. This should be a tight, fast B-movie, but at 108 minutes, it's at least 20 minutes too long and the pacing is laborious. Did we really need clunky subplots about Guzman's police chief or the feud between island crime lords Lugo (Amaury Nolasco) and Big Biz (Danny Trejo)? At least Nolasco's character eventually figures into the increasingly ludicrous plot, but Trejo has almost nothing to do until the script (written by Farrelly Brothers collaborator Bennett Yellin and THE HOWLING: REBORN screenwriter James Robert Johnston) clumsily has him turn up at the end and somehow be the hero, which seems completely counterproductive considering that this is supposed to be a Gina Carano vehicle. Carano would do better to work with an Isaac Florentine or a John Hyams, both the kind of low-budget action auteur who can really bring out the best in action stars like Jean-Claude Van Damme, Scott Adkins, and Dolph Lundgren. Carano's niche is practically pre-carved, but ponderous duds like IN THE BLOOD aren't going to do much to help her make her case. You're better off watching HAYWIRE again. (R, 108 mins) SMALL TIME (US - 2014)
Since his acrimonious departure from LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT in 2011 over a salary dispute, Christopher Meloni has been jobbing around from gig to gig, with an acclaimed but short-lived recurring role on TRUE BLOOD, supporting roles in 42 and MAN OF STEEL, and, more recently, the Fox sitcom SURVIVING JACK, which survived four episodes before being cancelled, and a hilarious arc as Julia Louis-Dreyfus' personal trainer/secret paramour on VEEP. In 2012, Meloni shot the low-budget SMALL TIME, written, directed, and self-financed by 24 creator Joel Surnow. It gives the veteran TV actor a rare big-screen lead, but it's also the kind of small, personal film that just doesn't generate much interest outside of film festivals. It opens strongly and succumbs to cliche and formula in its second half, but a decade ago, a film like SMALL TIME probably would've become a minor, word-of-mouth sleeper hit instead of getting the VOD dump-job from distributor Anchor Bay Films. Meloni is Al Klein, a master used-car salesman and co-owner of Diamond Motors, along with his best friend Ash Martini (Dean Norris). Al is going through a midlife crisis and can't commit to girlfriend Linda (Garcelle Beauvais), and as his son Freddy (Devon Bostick) is graduating from high school, Al fears the years have slipped away. Despite the protestations of his ex-wife Barbara (Bridget Moynahan) and her wealthy investment broker husband Chick (Xander Berkeley, the go-to actor for "asshole second husbands"), Freddy wants to skip college and work as a salesman with his dad. Wanting some father-son bonding time, Al welcomes Freddy onboard as he and Ash school him in the ways of wheeling and dealing.
Despite some funny scenes of car-lot hustling, SMALL TIME isn't another USED CARS-type comedy. The focus remains on Al and the realization that maybe this isn't the life he wants for his son, especially since his gift for closing deals almost immediately gives the impressionable Freddy a swelled head, which isn't helped by the encouragement of Ash, a well-meaning guy who loves Freddy but often comes off as a bad-influence uncle, and some cynical salesman friends who teach Freddy that "people are shit and they'll believe anything." Al and Ash may be fast-talking salesmen, but they're generally honest, and Al worries about the side of Freddy that the job is bringing out. SMALL TIME is a small labor of love for all involved, but once Freddy starts getting a shitty attitude, Surnow's script devolves into too many standard-issue tropes and conventions, culminating in a really bad moment when Bostick gets in Meloni's face and yells--what else?--"You're so...small-time!" There's also too many whimsical elements that film fest folks love: set in an undetermined period that would appear to be the early '80s, the film opens with an older Freddy narrating "It was the summer that changed my life"; montages set to soul and/or Latin music; gregarious ethnic supporting characters; and a kooky and improbably Scottish secretary (EXTRAS' Ashley Jensen) who has no idea how to make coffee. There's a lot in SMALL TIME that should completely derail it, but the consistently-underrated Meloni is the glue that holds it together. He's terrific here and his rapport with both Bostick and Norris (as well as in the seemingly improvised scenes with their lunch group of crass, old-school salesmen buddies played by Kevin Nealon, Ken Davitian, and Barry Primus) really manages to redeem the film's many inherently self-destructive elements. SMALL TIME is slight and predictable, but it's enjoyable enough, moves very briskly, and is a must-see if you're a Meloni fan. (R, 94 mins)
