Once Upon a Time in Hollywood – A Stylish, Captivating Ride

By Joe

4 out of 5 Stars

Spoiler Alert: The review below addresses a major plot twist.

Hollywood opens as actor Rick Dalton’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) career is skidding downward.  After starring in a hit tv Western, Dalton can only get work as the “heavy” opposing newer, rising stars.  He becomes depressed when urged to make spaghetti Westerns in Italy.  His gofer, driver, and stunt double, Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) knows his career has bottomed out.  Cliff gained a reputation for being difficult after a run-in with martial arts star Bruce Lee.  Cliff laughed at Bruce’s pontification about true combat, leading to a “friendly” showdown.  Bruce puts Cliff down once and Cliff puts Bruce into the side of a Cadillac.   We find Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), starlet and Rick’s neighbor on Cielo Drive, as she charms a theater employee into letting her in to see a film she just made.  Later in the movie things begin to go sideways when Cliff gives a hippie chick a ride to a ranch used to shoot movies.  He runs into members of the soon to become homicidal Charles Manson “family” living there.  There is a confrontation, Cliff puts down one of the men for puncturing his tire and leaves to the insults of the female cult members.  Rick and Cliff finally do go to Italy to shoot Westerns.  The night they return, Manson orders some of his cult members to go to the Cielo Drive house where Tate is living, to which Charlie has a connection, and carry out a bloody massacre.  As they drive by Rick’s house, he comes out and berates them for their noisy old car.  They decide to kill Rick instead and then break into his house armed with knives and a gun.  Cliff, who has just smoked an acid laced cigarette, confronts them but is so stoned he asks if they are real.   Things look dark until Cliff cues his seemingly sweet pit bull Brandy, who turns into a vicious attack dog.  Rick is in the pool and becomes uniquely involved when action spills outside.  After all victims are carted off, Sharon asks Rick up for a drink and to tell her what happened, as you do with neighbors.

I liked this film a lot and give it 4 stars.  It is Quentin Tarantino’s best effort since the iconic Pulp Fiction but is not quite as good.  Hollywood is an alternative history.  You expect to see what in real life was the very gory murder of Sharon Tate and her friends, but the movie goes in an entirely different direction.  It features an outstanding performance by DiCaprio as an insecure, failing actor.  It is also a starring role for Pitt, who swaggers his way through the movie.  The scene where he pulls off his shirt to fix a tv antenna is apparently getting serious hits on YouTube.  Margot Robbie doesn’t have a large speaking role but adds an innocent presence that underscores the sweetness of the real Sharon Tate.  The ending is bloody, but somewhat less so than most other Tarantino movies.  Hollywood works as a buddy movie and nails the time when less complex tv shows and movies were giving way to the era of counterculture and the anti-hero.  Tarantino nails the essence of 1969 through serious attention to the music, tv shows, movies, styles, and ads of the time.  The numerous cameos, like Damian Lewis as Steve McQueen, are also fun.  Tarantino’s vision of the late 1960s is a stylish, captivating ride.   

And that’s a wrap….