Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is arguably my favorite Quentin Tarantino’s (Inglorious Bastards, Django Unchained) movie. However, that isn’t saying a lot since he is not one of my favorite directors out there. I admit that there is an audience for his movies. I’m just not a part of that audience. For me, his films are too often over the top, are loaded with extreme and unneeded violence, and contain the foulest language you’ll hear from a big-budget movie any year that one of his movies was released. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was FAR different than his previous eight films. The story was not over the top. The cursing, while present, was used to accent a verbal exchange rather than serve as the root of it. And outside of a 10-15 minute sequence, there wasn’t any over-the-top violence. This movie was long and a bit boring, but it wasn’t bad. It also had excellent acting performances.
bittersweet, intricate, and whimsical look back at the film business at the close of the 1960s, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood stars Leonardo DiCaprio (The Revenant, Titanic) as Rick Dalton, an aging actor whose drinking problem has caused the end of his most recent television show. His stunt table Cliff (Brad Pitt- The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Babel) serves as much more. He’s Rick’s handyman and driver (Rick isn’t allowed to drive due to multiple driving under the influence citations). Their friendship is concrete. Cliff doesn’t see himself as less than what he is, and he’s prepared to follow Rick anywhere he goes in his career. Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino – Scent of a Woman, Heat) is a producer who encourages Rick to go to Italy, where he can star in many spaghetti westerns. But Rick thinks this is a career-low, and he will be referred to as a has-been. So instead, he signs on to the show Lance,r where he will play a villain to hero James Stacey (Timothy Olyphant – The Crazies, F/X’s Justified).
Meanwhile, Rick’s new neighbor is Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha), and he hopes friendship with his new neighbor will reignite his career. Roman’s young wife Sharon (Margot Robbie – I, Tonya, Mary Queen of Scots) is an up-and-coming actress currently co-starring in a film in town. So, attending her own movie and hearing the appropriate gasps and cheers completely fulfills Sharon.
When Cliff isn’t assisting Rick, he’s at home in his trailer with his dog. He strikes up a fancy with Pussycat (Margaret Qualley – The Nice Guys, Native Son), a big woman who may or may not be 18 years of age. He sees her hitchhiking multiple times before he finally picks her up and drives her back home to the Spahn Ranch, where Cliff used to shoot films with Rick. Unfortunately, it’s also the place where Charles Manson lives, and Pussycat encourages Cliff to stick around to meet him.
Tarantino said when making this, he didn’t have a single lead but rather two. That is apparent in the film. Unfortunately, more scenes feature DiCaprio OR Pitt rather than DiCaprio AND Pitt. There are long periods where we transition from one character to the other before we go back to the first character, and we’re like, “Oh, wait. I forgot that was still happening.” I would have preferred to see more of DiCaprio, even if it meant seeing less than Pitt. Meandering between these two stories as well as Robbie’s proved to take away from our focus. As soon as we start caring about Rick, we are taken away from him. When we circle back, we’re projected forward as if we’ve been with Rick the entire time. And that just wasn’t the case. I imagine that to get Pitt to sign on, there was a promise to be co-stars in the film. However, breaks from either character compromised the overall flow of the film.
As with all of his films, Tarantino’s latest was top-notch in production design. The film had a great soundtrack. Side characters, including Dakota Fanning, Kurt Russell, Emile Hirsch, Bruce Dern, and Damian Lewis, to name a few, were very good. It seemed like everyone wanted a part of this film, which was nearly sure to resonate with critics and audiences alike.
All in all, it was a B- movie. Except for Inglorious Bastards, it was the best movie directed by Tarantino since Pulp Fiction. It had elements of being great, but I’m not sure Tarantino can make a great movie in my eyes. His vision and what I enjoy are just two different things. I will say that before he started directing, he wrote the screenplay for True Romance, one of my 25 favorite movies of all time and a film that spent a good decade as my all-time favorite movie. With Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, it would be to research what your favorite critics say about it. It is long. Filmists might not notice how much, but the everyday moviegoer may look at their phones occasionally to see how much time remains.
Plot 7.5/10
Character Development 7.5/10
Character Chemistry 9/10
Acting 9/10
Screenplay 8/10
Directing 7/10
Cinematography 9/10
Sound 9/10
Hook and Reel 7/10
Universal Relevance 7.5/10
80.5%
B-
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