Review Detail

When I read about the notorious US theatrical cut years ago, I was very curious, but of course it was nigh impossible to find at the time. So when it finally made its way onto archive.org in a VHS rip, it was certainly an intriguing specimen as far as how a film's narrative and impact could be radically altered by film editing. But of course, it was this old VHS tape rip that degraded near the end, which while quite watchable, was an underwhelming viewing medium. So I was delighted to see this reconstruction, and may I say I'm thrilled that TM2YC included 2 versions here, a hybrid cut using mostly HD footage while using the VHS rip footage for sections or shots that were exclusive to the US theatrical cut, and the other being completely HD footage, with the exclusive US theatrical cut footage substituted with extra footage from the international version over the audio from the VHS source. The latter must have been a challenge to edit around in those particular spots, but the effort is really good here.

The US theatrical cut of course is really a bastardization of Leone's vision here, and many would prefer to see it buried, let alone NOT reconstructed in HD, but I disagree. I actually found Leone's international 3h49min version a bit long, so was drawn to seeing a shorter version, but this cut is a good lesson in how there's a cost to truncating a story too far down in editing which compromises a lot and ruins the film's impact, so I'm able to better respect the uncut version even in its long run time. But now, thanks to TM2YC, this newly recovered version is now viewable in better quality and is an intriguing watch to those like myself that find radical reworkings of films in editing very fascinating, whether that's for the better or for the much worse.