The ninth film in Quentin Tarantino’s glorious, unapologetic and often controversial career is nothing short of a masterpiece. Set in Los Angeles in 1969, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood is a stylish, intoxicating and hilariously funny buddy movie which acts as a tribute to Hollywood’s golden age of film and TV.
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt, the film takes on the infamous Manson murders as seen through the eyes of a down-on-his-luck TV actor and his stunt double, attempting to make sense of an industry that has moved on without them.
As the former star of popular TV Western series Bounty Law (think Maverick or Bonanza), Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) was once the pride and joy of his Network, that is until the show was cancelled and the roles started to dry up. Nowadays, Rick has only his long-time stunt double Cliff Booth (Pitt), a man with a seemingly dark and murky past, to help him through a daily routine of excessive drinking and wallowing in self-pity.
Advised by talent agent Marvin Schwarz (Al Pacino) against his many typecast walk-on TV parts alongside every young and hip up-and-comer, Rick must decide what to do next to save his career. With Hollywood invaded by hippies and art-house European filmmakers, things take on a surreal turn when Roman Polanski (Rafal Zawierucha) and girlfriend Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) move in next door to Rick’s humble Hollywood Hills condo.
Ardent cinephile Tarantino presents, what is undoubtedly, one of his most inspired, complex and decidedly bonkers films to date. Channeling his own nostalgia, not with misty-eyed bitterness, but with a great deal of tenderness, the director has done a fantastic job in making us hanker for a time before the spell of old Hollywood glamour was forever shattered by the Manson murders.
Opting to tackle the Tate murders, rather unexpectedly, from a surreal angle, Tarantino has managed to avoid exploiting the memory of those savagely murdered by the Manson family on that fateful August night.
Offering Rick Dalton as a rather buffoonish, stuttering has-been, DiCaprio does a great job in portraying a man who is both excellent at what he does, and completely out of his dept in a world he no longer recognises. Brad Pitt is as brilliant as ever as the enigmatic Cliff Booth, a man teetering between good and evil.
For her part, Margo Robbie is utterly mesmerising in a fictional version of Sharon Tate whom she offers as bright, spritely and almost ethereal in her care-free, serene demeanour.
Once Upon A time In Hollywood is as brilliant in its precision as it is preposterous in its twist and turns. A definite return to form for a director who has made his love for all things Hollywood into an art form. Spellbinding.
