Score: B+
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie
Running time: 161 minutes
Rated R
Long Story Short: Quentin Tarantino takes audiences back to one of his beloved eras - in the world and on film - in late-60s LA. Appropriately, contemporary superstars DiCaprio and Pitt lead the way in a movie focused on recreating the look, sound, and feel of the past. Considering that the plot is secondary, it's a bit long, but there's still plenty of fun to be had in one of the auteur's most relaxed works yet. A great way to spend a warm summer evening.
Los Angeles, 1969, is a city in transformation, with some old stars fading into obscurity and new ones just beginning their rise. Rick Dalton (DiCaprio) is a long-time TV star, but has found himself resorting to one guest role after another. He is followed in his set-hopping by old friend and stunt double, Cliff Booth (Pitt), once a star in his own right. After meeting with a big time producer, Dalton sees one last opportunity to revive his dying career, though the habits he's fallen into over the years present formidable obstacles. Meanwhile, Booth's encounters the city's growing population of hippies as he journeys through the city, at once fascinated and suspicious of them. A sprawling place, LA still isn't big enough for the increasingly divergent cultures it contains, and a clash is inevitable.
Once Upon a Time... is anchored by two of Hollywood's biggest megastars, but has a lot of other familiar faces, too. Leonardo DiCaprio, as the fictitious fading TV star Rick Dalton, produces a tremendous performance, the best in the film. Most effective are the acute and diverse ways in which he shows Dalton's vulnerability and crisis of confidence; these range from subtle withdrawn postures to hilarious, full-on meltdowns. Any positive trigger in his life brings out the old confident, even egotistical side - it's always lurking - but it's a ruthless time in LA for Dalton, and DiCaprio shows the turmoil it causes exquisitely. Pitt is fun to watch as usual, too, but his "cool guy" routine is not appropriate for the role, in my opinion. Whether it was intended to be that way, or Pitt just made it so, it doesn't quite add up. It's hard to blame him, though, considering the overall vibe of the film, and he knows how to do it. Margot Robbie portrays the famed Sharon Tate; although she gets quite a bit of screen time, she has very little dialogue. It's primarily a visual role, something the gorgeous Robbie is well-suited for, though she also still does a good job conveying her character's care-free, innocent demeanor. There's a dizzying number of cameo roles (portraying both real and fictitious people... it gets confusing), from Al Pacino to Lena Dunham, but the big three are the primary players. Still, two supporting roles stand out: Julia Butters as Dalton's precocious young Method-actor (not actress) co-star, and Mike Moh in a brief but hilarious scene as Bruce Lee.
Once Upon A Time is one of Tarantino's most intimate and personal films, full of his trademark style but ultimately too indulgent to achieve greatness. The setting - a blur of real and made-up LA and Hollywood from the late-60s - is another new one for Tarantino, but as usual it is guided by highly flawed yet intriguing individuals. The narrative is of very little consequence here; Tarantino instead seeks to - and succeeds wildly - bring the audience into the scenery, from the eternally bright sunshine to the glorious classic rock to the vintage garb of the cool kids. Unfortunately, two hours and forty minutes is rather long for such a meandering film, and Robbie's role (in addition to the foreboding of her very presence) is basically to give the film super-charged jolts of this style as interludes within Dalton and Booth's stories. Easily fifteen minutes of this could have been cut out. Still, Tarantino undeniably creates an absorbing, unique feel that is its own pleasure. Despite being close partners, Dalton and Booth basically split off into separate adventures. Thanks largely to DiCaprio's work, I found Dalton's professional struggles - from hilarious trailer meltdowns to clever exchanges with his young co-stars to his on-set failures and triumphs - more compelling. But the film seems to favor Booth's, with its higher-stakes conflict and historical context. It is also the one that leads directly to the film's conclusion; having resisted for almost two-and-a-half hours, Tarantino at last unleashes his typical, brutal violence. While I liked that he once again inverted history for the audience's sadistic, vengeful pleasure, it was also not nearly as easy to fully surrender to it as in the slaughter of evil Nazis and slave owners in Basterds and Django. A surprising yet somehow smooth end for the film, I walked out, like Dalton, satisfied if not unruffled.
***
While Once Upon a Time falls short (for me) of my favorite of the auteur's movies, it's still a high-quality and refreshing change of pace in the summer season. Neither a sequel nor a reboot, this - like Tarantino's other films - stands by itself yet is out to entertain just as much as any blockbuster. While the TV seasons have been thrown into disarray by streaming, the movie schedule has budged little. It does make sense to have more big, popcorn action spectacles in the summer than in other seasons, but it's great to have a little variety, too. Right now, only a handful of visionary filmmakers - Tarantino, Nolan, Scorcese, etc. - seem to get the resources required to reach a mass audience. They are making not only the films we want to see today - mixed with the blockbusters and other genre standards - but also the ones likely to inspire the next generation's visionaries. Be bold, Hollywood! Highly recommend Once Upon a Time, but if you're sensitive to gore and violence, careful about the ending.
* By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60263751
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