Tarentino, who wrote and directed ‘Once Upon a Time ….in Hollywood’ had the power to get the double male leads of Leonardo Di Caprio and Brad Pitt together in one movie. Leo plays a struggling TV star, Rick Dalton and Brad plays Cliff Booth, Rick’s stunt double.
The two characters have a deep friendship and equal respect of each other, which developed when they worked together on Rick’s 1950s black and white hit TV western. Throughout the 1960s, Rick has to work on spaghetti westerns and bit parts on TV shows, while Cliff works as his driver and house-sitter.
The house in the Hollywood hills is coincidentally next door to the rented home of director, Roman Polanski and his actress wife, Sharon Tate. History buffs will know that in real-life a terrible murder happened in that house in August 1969.
The Tarentino script and direction of the movie deals with the lead-up to the murder, and features many of the characters involved in the atrocity. The movie’s re-creation of Los Angeles in 1969 is done to a high-level, showing the movie theatres and street design of the era. The ambience of the movie shows the mood of the time, with the flower power parties and the feeling of the Vietnam War in the air.
The lives of Rick and Cliff remain on the periphery of the stench of evil that is brewing with a murderous gang, as they live in a movie farmyard on the outskirts of Hollywood. Rick and Cliff, almost in a ‘Forest Gump’ sort of way fizzle in and out of the lives of the movie elite and the evil gang.
The double male leads of Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio gave brilliant performances which were interesting to watch. Leo twisted himself in two with energy to play Rick, while Brad was more subdued in his performance of Cliff, which was totally effective. One of these guys will take the Best Actor Oscar next March.
Margot Robbie played Sharon Tate to such a great degree that the family of the 1960s movie star was reported to be very pleased with the performance. Footage of the movies which starred Sharon Tate were featured in ‘Once Upon a Time…..in Hollywood’, but it didn’t shake the moviegoers view of Robbie’s performance - if anything it enhanced it
It was nice to see some high-profile cameos from Bruce Dern, Kurt Russell, Al Pacino, Luke Perry and Damien Lewis. They all added to a very good movie, writes David Flynn.
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