 If audiences expected a character to root for, it was in for a shock. The main character in the story had become time itself. Guilt was more important than revenge. Introspection was no longer a sign of weakness. Relationships, for the first time in Leone's cinema, really mattered, and the violence was messy. This was to be a personal film at last, the product of 15 years of emotional investment. It's all those things, isn't it, that movie?