Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood ** (2019, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie, Al Pacino) – Movie Review

Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood (2019) visits the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age in 1969 Los Angeles. Leonardo DiCaprio stars as tormented one-time TV cowboy series star Rick Dalton, who tries to make it in Italy, Clint Eastwood-style, thanks to his stereotypical Jewish agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino), and with the help of his aggressive longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt).

Rick and Cliff’s careers, their professional relationship and old Hollywood are all over. It is the final fling, just like the old gang in Sam Peckinpah’s The Wild Bunch. Noboby wants them any more.

Rick and Cliff return to Hollywood, with Dalton’s career over and their relationship finished, where they have a final night together at Dalton’s house, which happens to be next door to the home of Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie).

Okay, we get it, writer-director Tarantino is in love with old movies and old Hollywood. He is still the young video store geek who plays B-Westerns in his head, and as writer-director is a magpie borrowing from all over the place and reassembling the items he’s borrowed (posters, film clips, TV shows) to make what he hopes will be something new and original.

Margot Robbie in Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood (2019).

He does this with huge, infectious love and enthusiasm, that of a true amateur, and at epic length, obviously aiming to have the last word on the Sixties, the Manson murders, and the pop culture of 50 years ago, but he doesn’t know what to do with his large ensemble cast and multiple story lines. Tarantino has meandering story lines but he doesn’t have an actual story.

He has two or three good ideas here: the washed-up TV star and his stunt double; the TV star living in the next house to Sharon Tate; er, I can’t come up with a third. But he thinks those, and the old Sixties movie references are enough to seem clever and original. But they are not clever and original.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is well made, stylishly done, and confidently achieved, as befits a film-maker with a 30-year career behind him, and with a stonking great $90,000,000 budget to play with. But it comes over as smug and complacent, a bit indulgent and juvenile, even sometimes silly, and a bit of an ordeal to sit through at 161 minutes.

Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is flashy and conjures up the late Sixties enthusiastically, but it is often talky and tedious, with small, unimportant scenes taking up way too much screen time. And then finally it is extremely violent and sick-makingly nasty, in a climax which is all the worse because it is played for laughs. Okay, it is a Tarantino film, and we expect it, we are waiting for it, it is the thing that has kept us still in our seats for two hours in anticipation. But, boy, is it unpleasant. Could he have made a tribute to Hollywood’s golden age just, say, a little bit nicer?

There are only two decently written roles in the whole movie, giving DiCaprio and Pitt chances that they grab eagerly. There’s not much chemistry between the two supposed old friends, unlike say, John Traviolta and Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction. But separately, the two stars are rock solid, even battling characters who are far from sympathetic. Pitt’s character’s lurches into violence are truly disturbing. DiCaprio’s character is a self-seeking, self-obsessed narcissist. But DiCaprio and Pitt have the wit and charm to make their characters sympathetic, alluring, and even memorable.

Robbie is a lovely woman, but she looks nothing like skinny Sixties dolly bird Tate, and her role is a nothing kind of thing, despite all her screen time. Her cinema visit to see her own film The Wrecking Crew is one of the scenes that drags on slowly for ever for no real reward. DiCaprio shares another endlessly long scene with Julia Butters as an over-confident child actress, Trudi. This scene makes its point in a couple of seconds, then drones on for minutes.

A bunch of excellent actors are completely wasted in puzzlingly nothing roles: Emile Hirsch, Timothy Olyphant, Austin Butler, Dakota Fanning, Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, and Luke Perry. You look forward to seeing them, and then wish you hadn’t bothered. That king actor Pacino, never good in cameos, overacts in his two unconvincing scenes as the Jewish agent.

Tarantino drags in some famous names to bring cred and allure to himself and his film, Bruce Lee, Sam Wanamaker, Steve McQueen and Roman Polanski. They all seem to be played by actors who look nothing like the originals – Mike Moh, Nicholas Hammond, Damian Lewis and Rafal Zawierucha. Is that the joke here?

Tarantino lectures on the films and mores of the Sixties, showing posters, lobby cards and clips from the movie memorabilia stuff that is in his brain. Fair enough, it is fun, at least when it paces up and isn’t violent.

Quite honestly, though, if you want to learn about the films of the Sixties, try a film encyclopedia or movie website.

It won two Oscars. Brad Pitt for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role, even though it is a starring role and he’s not that outstanding. More reasonably and fairly, Barbara Ling and Nancy Haigh won for Best Achievement in Production Design.

It won three Golden Globes, including Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy when it is not a musical or a comedy, as well as Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture (Pitt) and Best Screenplay – Motion Picture (Tarantino).

It won one BAFTA Film Award: Best Supporting Actor (Pitt).

© Derek Winnert 2019 Movie Review

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