It came as a big surprise to me recently when I realized that this movie never crossed paths with me. First off, it’s a Tarantino movie, and secondly, one that features Margot Robbie, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo Dicaprio. What a world.
Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is the most recent addition to his impressive filmography. This movie is pretty recent and definitely fools you as it takes place in late 60s Hollywood. The movie is centered around (but not all about) spiraling actor Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), combining elements of real history and other plotlines as we’ve seen respectively through other Tarantino classics, Inglourious Bastards and Pulp Fiction. Rick Dalton was a famous western Tv star in the 1950s-1960s but has struggled with landing big parts and is determined to make it into movies instead. His best friend and also stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), is of even less success but seems content with his life. He drives around Rick and tries to motivate him early in the movie and later gets more screen time as our story turns historical. Rick Dalton is fictional, but with Tarantino there’s always a little bit of a grain of salt to things and aka, a hidden meaning or inspiration. Steve McQueen, a real western Tv show star later turned movie star (unlike Dalton), is found to be the inspiration for Dalton’s character. Once Upon A Time In Hollywood entangles what history has called the “the end of the 60s”, marking the end of a flower power Woodstock inspired movement of popular culture. The reason the 60s were so abruptly ended in a strictly popular culture angle, were the Manson Murders and in our case, the Sharon Tate murder. So I generally like to dumb down things because everybody hates an overcomplicated story to follow (at least I do) so that’s what I’m going to do. Here’s the gist of what Tarantino is putting inside of Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’s story. The Manson Family Murders haunted the Los Angeles area and movie making scene because of Charles Manson–A cult leader who basically had a bunch of followers who supported his race apocalypse beliefs. Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie’s character) is playing Sharon Tate, who actually existed unlike Booth and Rick Dalton. What happens in real history is Sharon Tate is murdered by members of the Manson cult family. Now Tarantino puts his own twist on this history with an alternative ending, tying Cliff Booth, Rick Dalton, and the Manson cult members, as well as a nod to Sharon Tate in the final scene. Knowing that coming into watching this movie should serve you much better than the average viewer.
The Pros:
It’s been about a week since I watched this as I’m writing this review, but OUATIH (Once Upon A Time In Hollywood) has stuck with me enough that I can write about it coherently enough.
What’s stuck with me the most has to be the soundtrack. I’m a sucker for late 60s and 70s music, so this movie opened up a wormhole for me to dive into when the first songs played. Tarantino is so good at picking music for movies that even Spotify has made a playlist of songs he’s put on his movies’ soundtracks. My favorites featured on OUATIH were: “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” by Neil Diamond, “Good Thing” by Paul Revere & The Raiders, and most of all “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” by Bob Seger. These songs perfectly compliment the scenery and ambience to launch us into the late 60s of L.A..The song “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” hits us when Booth is speeding through the city in his Volkswagen Karmann Ghia and that scene is just pure cinema to me. I love the angles we get of him whipping the car around and the soundtrack blasting multiple songs during his commute home from dropping Rick off. It’s weird for me to think about what you’re thinking as you read me writing about how good a driving scene with no action or dialogue is… but trust me, this scene is so good. As for more on the soundtrack, I’ll try not to derail too much from the movie because the soundtrack is music, but I did a dive into Paul Revere & The Raiders and found multiple diamonds in the rough. A movie that can entertain me even after it’s over will definitely land a special spot in my heart.
Amazing long scenes. Along with Booth’s drive home are many other great scenes that can stand alone from the movie. One great one is where Cliff Booth and Bruce Lee have it out on the lot of a movie they both are casted in, The Green Hornet. While this scene got criticism for portraying Bruce Lee as cocky, I personally loved it. Watching the two fight and specifically Lee getting smashed into the car was entertainment at its best. It foreshadowed Cliff’s calmness under pressure and fighting abilities. The other scene worth noting is DiCaprio playing an angry and temper blown Rick Dalton. After missing his lines, Rick Dalton heads back to his trailer where he throws objects and cusses himself out. His full outburst is top tier acting from one of the industry’s best and also carries the story of Dalton’s troubles as an actor.
Oh, I almost forgot the final scene. A little bit over the top by Tarantino but that’s kind of what he does sometimes. He gave us back that blood and gore we saw in Reservoir Dogs and combined it with many entertaining elements like the flamethrower and Booth on acid. I think I explained the meaning of the final scene enough so I’ll just talk about my favorite moments. The fact that Cliff smoked an acid dipped joint and then proceeded to fight a group of hippies successfully was really entertaining to me. I think our question to the “Did he kill his wife?” was answered in this final scene with the brutality of the murders, which now that I think about it, must be a nod to Manson telling his murderers to kill Tate and her guests as brutally as possible. Well what’d you look at that, it all comes together. All the chaos also ensues as Dalton is listening to music in the pool on his lazy boy pool chair thingie. But, when he’s alarmed of the fight from one of the hippies crashing through the window, Rick grabs the flamethrower seen from one of his past movies and burns the hippie “to a crisp.” Right after this scene finally is the convening of our two plotlines–Tate and Rick Dalton.
Beautiful cinematography. Everything from foot shots (NOT MARGOT ROBBIE’S) getting out of cars, Booth’s driving scene, and overhead aerial shots. The film does all these cool maneuvers like when they pan from Rick’s house to Tate’s, which I’d guess was done with a drone but maybe not.
The Cons
Spahn Ranch scene. I really enjoyed Cliff beating up the hippie that slashed his tire but the rest of this scene is really not worth it. Sure, it gives us the reasoning for why Manson’s cult followers came to kill Cliff. But, it’s really long. It’s a 20 minute long scene that could’ve been five or ten. I guess the rewriting (of history) that Tarantino was trying to do was to have the hippies go after Cliff because he was rudely insistent on seeing George Spahn, the owner of the ranch the hippies live on. Probably also the fact that I think he wanted to see Spahn not only because he was one of his past directors, but also because he wanted to check if he was being taken advantage of by the hippies/Manson cult for his land. Either way, I saw the scene as boring until he beats up the guy in front of the whole ranch so it was a con to me.
A fantastic blending of late 60s pop culture, hollywood’s harsh truths and history, and a fantastic cast with even more fantastic acting. That is Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. The Score is a 91.