Film Review: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

 

Quentin Tarantino is often considered to be one of the greatest directors of our time, if not the greatest. His films span many genres and feature exciting stories told with sharp dialogue and gorgeous cinematography that makes them enjoyable to a wide variety of audiences. Whilst I have not watched all his works, the ones I have were all exceptionally good. With this in mind, I had high expectations for his latest film, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ (2019) but unfortunately these were not met.

 

One of this film’s biggest issues for me is its story, or more rather the way it tells it. The film is set in 1969 Los Angeles and focuses on Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio), a 1950’s western star who’s fallen out of favour, and his stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) as they navigate a changing Hollywood. Along the way the duo become wrapped up in the actions of the Manson Family and the lives of their neighbours, Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) and director Roman Polanski (a brief appearance by Rafal Zawierucha). On paper this sounds like an interesting narrative but in execution I found the two storylines don’t work that well together. The majority of the film’s runtime is dedicated to Rick filming a role for the TV show ‘Lancer’, which does provide some genuinely good scenes. However, this is all made to feel worthless when Rick instead finds success through another show that wasn’t shown to us and then concludes his story largely offscreen, told to us only through narration. The aim of this is so the climax of the film can focus on the Manson Family plotline which, despite a few hints towards the group throughout, only starts in the last hour. As a result, the film takes a large tonal shift from a more character driven story to finish in an over-the-top fight scene, which whilst enjoyable to watch (like the director’s other fight scenes) feels out of place in this film. Yet despite how cluttered the film is it also manages to feel surprisingly empty. Tarantino is well known for having lengthy scenes of dialogue in his films, which ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ continues the trend of. However, this time I feel Tarantino’s style interferes with the film, taking up time that could be dedicated to furthering the plot. As a result, for a lot of the film it feels as though nothing’s happening before rushing through the plot in the second half, making for a confusing watch. Whilst some may argue this is the case for many Tarantino films (e.g., ‘Pulp Fiction’), I believe there are other flaws to the film that, for me, make it even less enjoyable.

 

Another issue I feel the film has is with its characters. Whilst DiCaprio and Pitt do a good job bringing Rick and Cliff to life, the characters themselves feel shallow. Despite Tarantino’s attempts to flesh out the characters (such as giving glimpses into Cliff’s past and how he ended up where he is), the way the story is structured makes it so the two don’t receive much development or growth, making the story even harder to be engaged by. In real life the Sharon Tate murder was pivotal to the Manson Family events but, in the film, she is mostly absent, appearing in only a few scenes that have little impact on the plot making it more baffling why an accomplished actress like Margot Robbie was bought on for a relatively minor role. At worst, the characters in this film are downright irritating, which is the case for the main Manson Family members. Of course, this was probably intentional on Tarantino’s part, to make the villains as unlikable as possible. The issue here is that Tarantino has constructed good villains like this in the past, such as with Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) in ‘Inglorious Basterds’, who was an annoying but also genuinely intimidating character, here the villains are treated as more of a joke. This lack of strong characters along with a weak story is why I believe ‘Once Upon A Time In Hollywood’ was such a disappointing film for me.

 

With that said, I did find some redeeming qualities in the film. As mentioned before DiCaprio and Pitts’ acting is brilliant as usual, along with Margot Robbie. Perhaps some of the best scenes in the film are the ones disconnected from the plot such as a scene where Rick is having a breakdown in his trailer and one where Sharon Tate is watching one of her films in a cinema.  It is in these scenes that the actors get to show how talented they are. Visually the film is stunning, with the bright colour palette creating a fantastical image of Hollywood and the camerawork making scenes even more satisfying to look at (at least when Tarantino isn’t determined to put women’s feet in the centre of the screen). Furthermore, it is clear Tarantino had a lot of passion for this period of media, with the film being littered with references to 1960’s film and TV such as ‘The Green Hornet’ and ‘Lancer’, Easter
eggs which are sure to delight audiences who remember them. Despite these flourishes, it still wasn’t enough to change my overall feeling towards the film.

 

Overall, ‘Once Upon a Time in Hollywood’ feels like a messy film that fails to live up to the standards set by films such as ‘Pulp Fiction’ and ‘Kill Bill’. Whilst this is not a terrible film, the cons outweigh the pros for me, and I believe there are much better films to watch by the same director. I believe this film had a lot of potential, the parallel stories are both interesting concepts, but Tarantino didn’t piece them together in a way that was satisfying to me. Despite this, I still believe Quentin Tarantino is a great director and I look forward to his next, and most likely last film.