Style can only carry a film so far

Rating: 6/10 (16 August 2019)

I really didn't expect to dislike 'Once Upon a Time in... Hollywood'. It's a Tarantino movie so it is still well above the average film, at least in terms of quality of production. But to say it was a disappointment would be an understatement. All the great things that are apparent in every Tarantino movie were missing, at least for the first 2 hours of the film. The problems stemmed from the fact that this was a character study, rather than being plot driven. Tarantino is usually so good at combining the two together, so for him to completely ignore one of those elements is a real shame.
The film is almost 3 hours long and it simply doesn't have the pacing to justify that. I lost count of the scenes where, after they'd finished, I thought to myself how easy it would have been to leave that on the cutting room floor. So many scenes were setting things up for later in the movie, which is fine and has to be done, but none of them had any creativity to keep them interesting. We simply had to listen to long boring conversations.
Finally after a couple of hours a very intense and well-crafted scene involving Brad Pitt's character at a ranch happens. It's arguably the best scene in the film and all I could think was, where has this been? There is no doubt that Pitt and Leo DiCaprio carry this film big time. Without their acting talents this film would have been unbearable. Pitt especially was the best thing this movie had going for it. The film does its best to redeem itself in the final half hour or so, by then the damage was already done. This is my least favourite Tarantino film to date I'm sad to say.