Once Upon a Time in the West

We had the good fortune to find this on last night and while I subscribe to the "it's the best western ever" gang, I watched it once more and can find a few things that don't add up.  Some of the sequences are confusing and seem out of place.  Still, at well over two and a half hours long, it kept me more than occupied.  Here's the plot from IMDb:

Epic story of a mysterious stranger with a harmonica who joins forces with a notorious desperado to protect a beautiful widow from a ruthless assassin working for the rail road. 

A young woman, Mrs McBain, moves from New Orleans to frontier Utah, on the very edge of the American West. She arrives to find her new husband and family slaughtered, but by whom? The prime suspect, coffee-lover Cheyenne, befriends her and offers to go after the real killer, assassin gang leader Frank Fonda), in her honour. 

He is accompanied by Harmonica (Bronson)on his quest to get even. Get-rich-quick subplots and intricate character histories intertwine with such artistic flair that this could in fact be the movie-to-end-all-movies.