Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood review


The 9th film from Quentin Tarantino is a tale of nostaglia, fame movies and the fading days of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Set in Los Angeles 1969 the story revolves around Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) the former a well known mainly TV actor and the latter his stuntman. After the cancellation of their hit show Bounty Law the pair are finding it more and more difficult to find roles in the industry with movies really taking off. Also starring Margot Robbie as Sharon Tate Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood feels incredibly personal as you watch it. It's wonderfully written and while the pace is slow there really is a reason to it all. You'll need a lot of patience with this one but it does pay off as overall Tarantino has once again delivered a very unique and powerful move that draws you in from the get-go. 

 Performance wise the movie is great too with DiCaprio at peak form as Rick Dalton. For me however it's Brad Pitt who is just amazing throughout. As the movie goes on his performance just gets better and better. Margot Robbie on the other hand, well I've always been a massive fan of hers but in this movie she just doesn't really fit for a majority of her on screen time. Sharon Tate was a major player back during the Golden Age of Hollywood and Robbie's performance is good but there's no real connection or impact to the main narrative of Dalton and Booth's character arcs. The same goes for Bruce Lee and Charles Manson characters who show up for a bare minimum of 5 minutes at best. I know these figures were important and are a big part of history but they feel shoe horned in. That's not to say the movie is bad or anything because it isn't but with less focus on scenes like that and a tighter more compact story / run time this could have been Tarantino's finest piece of work. 
Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood is an ambitious, almost character studly like movie from Tarantino. It's full of the usual suave and sophisticated dialogue from him and it's all backed up by 2 amazing performances from DiCaprio and Pitt respectively. The last 30 minutes are completely chaotic and turn the movie upside down in a way that I wasn't expecting. As a whole though Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood is worth your time. You do have to be patient with it but once it ends after almost 3 hours you will look back and remember the characters and world Tarantino brought to life. It's not his best movie as Inglorious Bastards is still my personal favorite along with Pulp Fiction but Once Upon a Time...In Hollywood does rank pretty high up. 

 ★★★★

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