Tarantino Finally Stopped Trying to be Tarantino

Rating: 9/10 (26 July 2019)

Make a note while watching Quentin Tarantino's entirely different kind of revenge revisionist-history film...
It not only centers around real life counter-culture figures Charles Manson & Family, Sharon Tate (a strutting Barbie Doll here), Roman Polanski and hairstylist Jay Sebring (Tate's supposed lover) but the last of The Family's victims, Donald "Shorty" Shea, an experienced tough-guy stuntman who thought the hippie horde was taking advantage of employer George Spahn at his formerly active Spahn Movie Ranch, where Manson and company made their very own playground, ultimately setting stage for the "Helter Skelter Murders" that infamously included an 8-month pregnant Tate...
For people expecting ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD to be the kind of bloody thriller Tarantino's known for, the dark and forbidding suspenseful stuff begins halfway through in a pivotal scene where Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth, a world-weary stunt man like Shea, checks up on old friend/acquaintance Spahn (Bruce Dern adequately replacing Burt Reynolds) to find out what the deal is with the hippie freeloaders...
But Pitt plays anything but a victim, built into such an indestructible bad ass he lives in a grungy LETHAL WEAPON style trailer, owns a pitbull and even gets the best of Bruce Lee, who, surprisingly since Tarantino worships Asian Kung Fu flicks, is a pretentious blowhard boob, and not even a decent fighter! Which can feel downright blasphemous from a filmmaker to his core-fans that both worship the legendary icon. But like everything else, it all makes its own bizarre/offbeat sense by the end...
Which shouldn't be spoiled except to say that even if you did know "how" things go down, the "why" is hilariously violent, unique and original despite initially seeming tacked on and rushed (following a sudden six-month lapse). Which might be because spending so much meantime with stunt-double Cliff Booth and the "has-been" actor he doubles for, runs errands for, and hangs out with, is the best thing going in a film where Tarantino hasn't seemed as loose and relaxed with since KILL BILL...
Perhaps it's because the usual endless string of pop culture references don't feel so contrived since the movie takes place where most of them originated. And in that, 1969 Los Angeles comes to life in predictably nostalgic, groovy grandeur. But with all the prolonged (and sometimes overlong) existential driving around town and hanging around movie sets, it's really more about characters than the time period they exist in. That alone puts HOLLYWOOD miles past INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, DJANGO UNCHAINED and THE HATEFUL EIGHT, which all overdosed on their own genre-driven style over substance...
For this is a much simpler tale, and a buddy flick to boot. Tarantino even compared his handsome duo to Robert Redford and Paul Newman... and yet, these particular buddies are hardly together at all. While Booth takes his aforementioned stroll through the bad-vibey Spahn Ranch (ironically staged like a HIGH NOON type showdown), faded star Rick Dalton makes the best of making the transition from playing the hero on his own bygone Cowboy TV series to becoming typecast (warned by an Al Pacino cameo) as a villain in everyone else's: Giving Leonardo DiCaprio a chance to truly enjoy himself in a Tarantino role...
And what really works about Leo's Dalton is that he's... well... an actor, and in that, somewhat of a pussy. Unlike his macho double, he only wins or loses fights based on whatever script he's working really hard trying to be convincing in. Providing a comfortably suited, down-to-earth niche for the A-list DiCaprio, who often chooses roles far too big for his britches. In other words, he doesn't seem to be striving for an Oscar, or trying to become the next Anthony Hopkins (many leading men want to be character-actors, but very few are both at the same time)...
As for fellow Oscar-winning success story, Quentin Tarantino, his directorial presence is surely felt, especially with the random flashbacks and expository filler to remind the audience why this and that is important right now as it's happening, again... plus the fact no one else would make such a deliberately pulsating jukebox of a film about films...
But there's also a feeling he's holding just-enough back so to, for the first time in decades, let his characters fill in the more subtle yet detailed moments that make RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION and especially JACKIE BROWN so fun to watch, again and again...
In striving for a perfectly good ride, Tarantino's ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD doesn't suffer from trying too-hard for epic greatness...
Sometimes pretty good can turn out pretty great.