what the internet says

76➖ steady

read from 74 public comments

not a rating — nobody here has rated the arc yet

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Once Upon a Time in the West

Name: Once Upon a Time in the West
Genre: Drama, Western
Released: 1968-12-21
Duration: 166 min

There were three men in her life. One to take her… one to love her —and one to kill her.

19682h 46mcritics 8.3/10

Drama Western

As the railroad builders advance unstoppably through the Arizona desert on their way to the sea, Jill arrives in the small town of Flagstone with the intention of starting a new life.

starring Claudia Cardinale, Henry Fonda, Jason Robards, Charles Bronson

FLICKFEEL

from 74 comments

COMMUNITY

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nobody yet

YOURS

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what the internet says

FUN

how good a time it was

MEANINGFUL

how much it moved you

Two separate readings, not parts of the score — the score says how much of it held you, these say what kind of watch it was.

Nobody has rated this on FlickFeel yet. This is public discussion of this title, read into a curve. It is not a rating and it never becomes one.

Read from 74 comments (34 from Reddit, 32 from Metacritic, 8 from TMDB reviews) — 25 of them described how it moves.

➖ steady — Holds one level all the way. Warm most of the way through. Very little of it ever resolves. Marked above the line: 1 that gave people chills.

Hover the curveDrag across the curve to see what people said at any point.

height: how intense it got, 0–100
gold above: how tender it felt. violet below — what it cost. Thick on both at once means it was doing both.
tension rail: how much was still unresolved
marks: single moments — a jump, a blow, chills, a laugh
grey haze: how sure we are — wider means fewer people described it

what critics said

Published reviews, not felt experience — a different question from the one above, and never mixed into the FlickFeel score.

Metascore

Tomatometer

96%

FlickFeel

“An additional treat is seeing Hollywood good guy Henry Fonda playing one of the nastiest curs in the West. Once Upon a Time in the West is one of the great films in cinema history. (8/30/2000 Review)”
Marjorie Baumgarten, Austin Chronicle · 100
“Leone brought back a masterpiece, a film that expands his baroque, cartoonish style into genuine grandeur, weaving dozens of thematic variations and narrative arabesques around a classical western foundation myth.(Review of Original Release)”
Dave Kehr, Chicago Reader · 100
“Sergio Leone's masterpiece. In Once Upon a Time in the West, Leone pulls together all the themes, characterizations, visuals, humor, and musical experiments of the three "Dollars" films and comes up with a true epic western. It is a stunning, operatic film of breadth, detail, and stature that deserves to be considered among the greatest westerns ever made. (Review of Original Release)”
Staff (Not credited), TV Guide Magazine · 100
“Akira Kurosawa once said that Toshiro Mifune could give him in three feet of film the emotion any other actor would take 10 to deliver, but in a single flash of Fonda's electric turquoise orbs, Leone (Kurosawa's first and sincerest flatterer-imitator) managed to say as much about John Ford, the devil, and the corruptions of the Way Out Western world as the genre ever would.”
Chuck Stephens, Village Voice · 100
“It’s probably unwise to come to Leone looking for too much in the way of feminism. Instead, Once Upon a Time in the West offers quintessential examples of the things he was better known for, including another blustery Ennio Morricone score. Visually, he mostly vacillates between extreme close-ups of intense faces and vast widescreen compositions, a technique that is lurching but also luridly beautiful.”
Josh Larsen, LarsenOnFilm · 88

Scores from Metacritic and Rotten Tomatoes, read 25 Aug 2026. Quotes belong to their publications and link to the full reviews.

what people actually wrote

Grouped by where it was written, because a considered review and a reaction typed an hour after the credits are different things. Every quote links to its source.

Reddit23 read

“Rythm escalading, indian cimetary landscape view, shots of eyes and hands, and that music... The scène IS a masterpiece”
kapatolojik▲ 18about 75–100% inread it ↗
“when the family is gunned down and Fonda saunters in”
kinghercules77▲ 13about 0–15% inread it ↗
“The final showdown is also one of the best, as it has a sense of weight too, the music, the flashback, and that dying flicker of realization as Frank is dying”
kinghercules77▲ 13about 85–100% inread it ↗
“can be seen as a slow”
ExpressTurnover4594▲ 11about 0–100% inread it ↗

Metacritic30 read

“The pace is slow.”
MrPajamasabout 0–100% inread it ↗
“At times, I was a little confused about what was actually happening and what was going on.”
MrPajamasabout 0–100% inread it ↗
“Deliberately slowly paced”
badshapedabout 0–100% inread it ↗
“it takes time to find the flavour of the plot”
alejandro970about 0–33% inread it ↗

TMDB7 read

“some scenes run long with agonizingly lengthy close-ups”
Peter McGinnabout 0–33% inread it ↗
“The opening scene is my favourite. Who would think it would be so captivating to have so little happen for so long (11 minutes till the first line is delivered by Charles Bronson). The photography, the sound of the creaking windmill, the tension and anticipation building. And then the action. Just magic.”
nrogoffabout 0–10% inread it ↗
“I can't say that this script doesn't play on Clint Eastwood's "Man with No Name" (which Sergio Leone also directed), but it's not important. If you're a spaghetti western fan, this film is a step up. The idea of putting Fonda in a bad guy role, and casting Bronson as anti-hero was a little shocking at first. At the end, I see how it worked to film's advantage by making all the characters more complex, ambiguous and real. If you were a Clint Eastwood, you'll love this film.”
badelfread it ↗
“The worst of the worst Leone Westerns. Leone destroyed the Westerns with his garbage, but the blame goes on to the critics who praised his lack of motivation, lack of inspiration, lack of credibility, lack of entertainment value, lack of strategy, just a total lack. This is the worst of his stupid Westerns. It's the most contrived of his contrived Westerns. It's another "classical Greek hero" story of gods, demigods, and cannon fodder. The more of a homicidal maniac you are, the more of a god”

Once Upon a Time in the West

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