Indulgent 1969 Hollywood Love Letter...Sort Of

Rating: 8/10 (10 August 2019)

You'll spend so long looking at painstaking recreations of vintage neon signs in the first 2 hours you may struggle to find the plot threads. Flashback within a flashback might be a bit distracting. Parts may go on a bit long. You'll uncomfortably gaze at the soles of dirty feet thrust right at the camera.
Don't hold this against the film. It revels a touch long in the times, but it's never hard to watch. The audience grew restless by the end of the second act, but was won over in the third. The fantasy, what-if ending, whose seeds were planted in the meanderings of the earlier 2 hours, pays out with such violent satisfaction that you will forgive the minorly self-indulgent nature of the film.
With all that said? It probably still could have lost 25 minutes and been just as effective.