"Baby, baby, baby, you're out of time."

Rating: 7/10 (7 August 2019)

Well I'm a big Tarantino fan, but I have to say, this one missed the mark for me. I thought the movie's pacing was excruciating, as most of the time nothing seemed to be happening. I didn't know anything about the story going in, so as it unfolded I was able to figure out that it had something to do with the Manson Gang, which had me prepared for a typically violent crescendo as the story came to a climax. However the film opted for an alternate reality to the actual events of August, 1969. This version had the Manson followers wind up at the wrong house, to be met with a fading television actor and his regular stunt double, dishing out punishment in true Tarantino style. By that time, my only reaction was to laugh at the absurdity of it all, what with Brad Pitt hammering his victim mercilessly into any available furniture, while Leonardo DiCaprio whipped out his trusty flame thrower to nail the chick in the swimming pool. Not bad for the guy who broke down on the set of 'Lancer' when he couldn't deliver his lines right.
In passing, the actors who portrayed Steve McQueen and Bruce Lee had an eerie way of channeling the former celebrities. Damian Lewis couldn't have been a better choice to mimic McQueen, he had the look and mannerisms that had me thinking he could have been the real deal. Mike Moh in some ways, looked more like Jason Scott Lee portraying Bruce Lee in the movie "Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story". I read that the family of Bruce Lee wasn't happy with the way Tarantino represented the former martial arts star in the film, but if that's the case, the same would have to be said of 'Dragon' because Jason Lee's interpretation to my mind was pretty much the same.
For nostalgia fans like myself, the film has some merit in reliving the names of old time TV and movie programs like 'Mannix', and Steve McQueen's 'Wanted:Dead or Alive', reinvented for this picture as 'Bounty Law'. There's also the 'Lancer' spot with Timothy Olyphant portraying that series' star, James Stacy. Margot Robbie was stunning as Sharon Tate, and if Tarantino had been a little sharper, he might have thrown in a plug for the only Sharon Tate film I've ever seen, 1967's "The Fearless Vampire Killers". But unfortunately, just like that old horror comedy, this story was sooooo long, with interminable scenes stretching the distance from one point to another, it felt a lot like those old horse chase scenes did in 'B' Westerns from the Thirties and Forties.