Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...Quentin Tarantino made a movie.

Rating: 9/10 (29 July 2019)

ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD just might be the best film ever about the making of movies, and the creative people who make them happen, and this is because director Quinton Tarantino's love film making, and those very people, suffuse every single frame of his latest film. His recreation of 1969 Hollywood will surely rank as one of his finest achievements, and this film, will likely not be considered his greatest (for me that honor still belongs to RESERVOIR DOGS and PULP FICTION), but I have a feeling that ONCE UPON A TIME... just might become his most beloved film. It is something of a departure for Tarantino, as the tone is far removed from his more recent violent action movies like KILL BILL, and INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, and many have compared it to JACKIE BROWN. There plenty of great dialogue, most of it so funny that it could easily be classified as a comedy, but verbosity of THE HATEFUL EIGHT is missing here, in fact, there is not one of Tarantino's "big speechs" by any character. This movie is truly character driven, seemingly dependent on great stand alone moments and sequences, especially in the first act, but I thought the plot threads flowed together nicely at the end, even if it did come after a time jump and a lot of narration that would have felt clunky in the hands of a lesser director. At two hours and forty minutes, some will call this movie "slow" and "rambling," which implies that it is dull, which can't be further from the truth.
And if this movie is character driven, then Tarantino hands the steering wheel to two of his finest creations: Rick Dalton, a fading star, whose main claim to fame was being the lead in a TV western of the 50's and early 60's, and his stunt double, and all around best friend, Cliff Booth, who has been with Rick since his days as a big star. Rick is insecure and fearful, as the TV western is now past its prime, and a changing culture has left actors like him utterly adrift; his career has been reduced to guest starring spots as villains on other network shows. Rick could easily be a stand in for Robert Horton, Robert Fuller, Will Hutchins, Nick Adams, Edd Byrnes, or any other B/W ghost from MeTV. Cliff, on the other hand, is a solid rock, capable of dealing with any challenge or problem, from getting Rick to the set on time, to getting on the roof and fixing Rick's TV antenna. But there is some darkness in Cliff's past, and it is quickly apparent that he can be quite violent if the situation requires it - a point that will become important by the end of the movie. And in Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, Tarantino found his perfect Rick and Cliff, as both actors do career best work here. Their scenes together are the very definition of "chemistry" as they play so well off one another.
The other story, concurrent to Rick and Cliff's, is that of Sharon Tate, the real life actress who was the wife of Roman Polanski, and the most famous victim of Charles Manson's murder cult. Tarantino arranges for her to live right next door to Rick Dalton, another fact that will become pertinent in the finale. Margot Robbie is awesomely beautiful in the part, and I must say that I think Tarantino is tremendously respectful to her here.
As I said, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD does not have the violent swagger of Tarantino's recent films, and at the twenty minute mark, as was a little worried that he might have taken too deep a dive into Hollywood of the past, giving us a film that was just a meander through nostalgia, but once I adjusted to the specific rhythm of this film, which tells its story through some great sequences, and character interactions, all was well. There are so many scenes that I instantly fell in love with: Cliff's encounter with a wonderfully cocky Bruce Lee (wonderfully played by Mike Moh); the swinging party at the Playboy mansion (where Damian Lewis not so much as plays Steve McQueen as suggests him); Rick having his faith in himself restored by a child actress on the set the Lancer pilot; Rick singing "Behind the Green Door" on Hullabaloo; Sharon Tate sitting in a movie theater and watching the audience react to her on the screen in the Dean Martin film, THE WRECKING CREW; Cliff's visit to the Spahn Ranch and his encounter with Manson's "family," a scene filled with palpable dread. Then there is the finale, where Tarantino takes a page of his own from INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, and rewrites history. The finale did put a smile on my face, as I truly loved seeing some of the worst human beings who ever lived getting exactly what they deserved, and having this fairy tale come to a happy ending.
The Hollywood of 1969 is as much a character in this film as any actor, from the cigarette smoke in the bars, the Hippies on the street corners, Neil Diamond on the FM radio (another great soundtrack), old Chevy pickups on the highways, the sideburns and miniskirts, the movie posters for Italian westerns, to the overwhelming sense of a time and place in transition, with the past slipping away fast, and an unknown future rushing in head long. That was the year of the Moon landing and Chappaquiddick, of Woodstock and Manson, as the 60's ended strong, and not for the last time would Americans look around and say, "How did we get here?"
And what a cast Tarantino has assembled, besides his leads, there is Al Pacino (as an agent who gets Rick a job in Italy), Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch (as Jay Sebring), old timers Bruce Dern and Clu Gulager, Clifton Collins, Lena Dunham, Austin Butler, Margeret Qually, Dakota Fanning (the last four playing members of Manson's family), Rebecca Gayheart, Luke Perry and Timothy Olyphant as Rick's costars on Lancer, Michael Madsen, Brenda Vacarro, Scoot McNairy, Nicholas Hammond (as Sam Wanamaker), Marting Kove and James Remar. Thankfully, Tarantino did not give himself a cameo, and stayed behind the camera. And I am also thankful that Tarantino did not give much screen time to Charles Manson himself, an individual who got way too much attention when he was alive. There was also enough name dropping of now obscure 60's Hollywood figures that Millennials will be busy for a week looking them up on their I-Phones (my favorite was the shout out to Sergio Corbucci).
Finally, I am most disappointed that I can't go on Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube and watch "Nebraska Jim" or "The 14 Fists of McCluskey."