Great... if you can look past the insulting, often disrespectful approach to the source material

Rating: 7/10 (13 December 2019)

What a great idea!...right up until it wasn't. From the fever dream failings of Leo's character to the depiction of a late 60's Hollywood recreated down to the last detail, nothing feels out of place. Except the entire ending that the whole story hinges on creeps up and falls flat on its face. There's no realization, no revelation and absolutely no intention, aside from the fact that one COULD rewrite history in such a way as to disregard and disrespect those who died at the hands of such evil people.
Those who live on are treated to Tarantino's childish, albeit impressively intricate, attempt at historical fiction taken to the most egregious of degrees. Never before have I seen someone trash so many for no reason other than to further their ego-maniacal domination of alternate history type storytelling. I guess going in I had expected that some care had gone in to keeping with the historical framework of the Polanski/Tate story line/murder and that whatever fictional groundwork would be built around those events leading up to and including those events. I had even worked out along the way how said events would impact the protagonist, what with all of his existential crisis and fits of self loathing building up.
Perhaps that may have seemed too obvious a route to Mr. Tarantino, instead opting for a ludicrous 3rd act so over the top as to rival even his history twisting film Inglorious B*st*rds. At least in that film some care was given as to what led to those changes. Here, there are no subtle drops in the sea. No easing into what could have been. Where we should perhaps have seen character growth begin to form around these great changes, something for the audience to connect to, we simply find emptiness- a hollowed form as soulless as the imagined history that can never be.
If Tarantino was trying for a retribution message to those at fault, yeah we get it, they are terrible people. We don't need this film to tell us that. Did it possibly tarnish the reputations of others that had no business being caught up in a display of flashy Hollywood make-believe? Did it ride the back of high profile tragedies only to twist reality for its own benefit? Yes. Yes it did.