A divot in the director's career

Rating: 6/10 (5 August 2019)

It's not peak Tarantino, and that's the biggest flaw of this movie. Whole 'lotta nothing happens for more than two hours, leading to the kind of violent denouement that we'd expect from the auteur. In fact, if you didn't know Tarantino wrote and directed this, you would be none the wiser after watching the film. It's set in the fall of 1969, shortly before the infamous Tate-LaBianca murders in Hollywood, and it (mostly) follows the travails of a has-been TV actor named Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime friend and stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt). Dalton used to be the star of a show called Bounty Law, a western in which his character is sort of an antihero, but the show ended its run when Dalton wanted to strike out for the presumably greener pastures of movies. Now he's kind of washed up, working as a guest star on current shows as the bad guy. Meanwhile, his buddy Cliff is sort of Rick's gopher, his own career derailed by his actions on the set of The Green Hornet. Completing the trio - although separately - is actress Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), wife of director Roman Polanski, who lives next door to Dalton in the Hollywood Hills. Much of the movie has to do with everyday life for these three in 1969 Hollywood, and there are a ton of movie references - sort of a Tarantino hallmark. But as Dalton, Booth, and Tate go about their lives, nothing really stands out as...well, interesting or full of any meaning for the audience. What probably was meant to be a lot of little scenes leading up to a fantastic conclusion was really a bunch of vignettes. The casting is as eclectic as we've come to expect from Quentin Tarantino, but the script doesn't really make use of anyone save for DiCaprio. Pitt and Robbie aren't given a lot to do other than look pretty, and talent like Al Pacino, Brenda Vaccaro, Damien Lewis, and Bruce Dern are paid very short shrift. The whole thing feels like imitation Tarantino and is definitely not among his best work. This is a dull movie, even with the "revised history" slant it tries to present.