Anyone who has watched Tarantino's movies know how they end. He does the same thing in all his movies, The bad guys get killed, the good guys are vindicated. Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill, Django Unchained... all of them. He's entirely predictable in this respect.
37
In real life, wasn't Tate a trophy?
In a world without Manson, what was the probability that Polanski would have dumped Tate for someone younger when she hit 30 or 35?
Her movie career would have been brief, going by the careers of just about every movie actress of that time (and this one).
Women in the movie business were and mostly still are trophies. Or has everyone forgotten Harvey Weinstein? You think he was the only one?
37
The cult to fear is the Tarantino cult, not Manson. The audience squealed with glee when Brad Pitt banged that head into the fireplace mantel. They had waited almost 3 hours for over the top QT violence and they finally got it. It's a love letter to QT, not to Hollywood. Avoid group thinking!! "Hollywood" is an epic fail.
42
I loved this movie - one of the better QT's movies. No gory violence until the very end. Great dialogue and chemistry between De Caprio and Pitt. Want to see it again!
67
Reminded me of "Fanny and Alexander" - really. Brilliant
19
For me the movie wasn’t much about the Manson Family, but more so a love letter to the golden age in Hollywood. Tarintino wanted to make a period piece, and Sharon Tate’s murder happened to line up with the time he was going for. I enjoyed it.
43
I saw this movie yesterday. As someone who was 8 years old and living in LA when the Manson murders happened, I started getting very anxious as the infamous date arrived and the countdown started. I was just thinking "please don't show it, please don't show it." As soon as Leo's character confronted the killers, I knew that QT was rewriting history and boy, did he ever! Although the violence was brutal and shocking (don't go to a Tarentino film if cinematic violence bothers you), it was also cathartic and satisfying, If only!
Kudos to everyone involved with this film that no spoilers leaked. I definitely did not see that ending coming!
116
It was so awesome. For two decades, people have been trying on different lenses -- most of which sound in moral hand-wringing -- in an effort to bring down Tarantino, but it hasn't worked, and it will never work, because his political and social agenda is zero. He doesn't have any point to make. He loves the movies and he wants to entertain. That's it. Everything he puts into his films is in service of a grandiose cinematic experience. To dissect his work through the lens of tenth-wave feminism or social justice or post-modernism or whatever is to point miss the point entirely of what he is doing. It's like asking a sommelier to analyze Coca-Cola. Tarantino set out to make a great movie with a satisfying ending. Mission accomplished, and then some.
If anyone cares, Sharon Tate's family approved of the script and her portrayal in the film.
167
A generally too-long and flat film except for the ending. I might have said good had it been abridged one less hour. The best part was the surprise ending.
25
The final scene, an aerial shot showing Dalton, Tate and her friends greeting, left me profoundly uncomfortable. I couldn't help wonder how Polanski and the family and friends of Tate and the other victims would feel watching that scene. It somehow felt really disrespectful to what they endured. Perhaps this sensation was worsened by the flippant nonchalance with which Dalton described the events to Sebring. Plus, what sort of man would leave his wife alone in the house where such a heinous attack had just taken place? The beginning of the moving was a little boring; the end was both silly and insensitive.
33
Somewhat amusing that fans of the film deny the movie is "about Charles Manson" and the murders that occurred on Cielo Drive. It's what propels the film. The early appearance of Charles Manson, the ominous march of family members around Hollywood, the visit to the Spahn Ranch. Not about Charles Manson? Give me a break.
8
The movie takes the ugliness of the historic event and turns it on to the Manson gang.
30
The end justifies the title. The movie is a totally brilliant hoot. I give it five stars and would submit it for Best Picture, Best screenplay, and Best Director Oscars. I thank God I saw it before reading Buchanan's story. I saw the spoiler alert and hope that no one who hasn't seen the film reads the article first. It's a GREAT fairy tale, and a hugely successful ENTERTAINMENT. Probably second only to Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid in terms of standout "buddy flicks" Kudos to Tarantino on every point. Best Hollywood film since "The Player!"
89
@Howard even better in my opinion. Really. I think it works on levels viewers are ignoring. These are also dreams. Honestly, I thought "Fanny and Alexander"
13
I just dropped by to say Brad Pitt is looking a lot like William Macy these days.
Oh yeah, if Clint Eastwood direct dozens of really bad movies and then come up with a few masterpeices can QT come up with one.
5
What I got the biggest kick from was Tarantino's simulation of the '69 LA media scape - pop tunes, radio and TV ads, bits of news, old TV shows, vintage signs and brands and, of course, endless movie marquees. One could tell he put a lot of passion into the selection of details, making sure to get it all just right.
To me, that was the real star of the show. In fact, that's the reason I may go back and see it again.
88
As someone who is 15 and has lived in LA much of my life, this movie was a very interesting experience for me. I had heard of the infamous Manson murders before, but I knew very few details and as such this movie was my first look at the specifics of his cult and the way the murders (sort of) went down. However, the ending was a massive shock to me, but it also felt very rewarding and like it made sense, in a way.
31
In his autobiography of about 30 years ago, Polanski wrote that he thought that if he had been home, he and Voytek Frykowski could have overcome the killers and saved everyone. I bet Tarantino read that book.
22
Margot Robbie was so insanely cute as Sharon Tate...the dirty bare feet on the back of the chair at the theatre, her wide care free smile and attitude throughout was just so happy. And why wouldn't she be? My wife (who isn't a big Tarantino fan, but god love her, has sat through every one of them since 1994) absolutely loved her. Brad Pitt in a comic role (funniest since True Romance) is one of my favorite things in film. We watched it in Newington NH at a Saturday matinee, with about 50 people who were mostly into it and the flame thrower scene at the end had most of us laughing. Also, it was nice to see Pacino in a role where he wasn't screaming. It was a fun fairy tale told by a master story teller. Can't wait for #10.
85
@ssgilp85
Listen to yourself. “The flame throwers scene at the end had most of us laughing.”
Disgusting. I couldn’t watch most of the scene of the murders because there is nothing funny about blood, guts and gore regardless of who is the target. Our culture is so puritanical about depictions of sex, which is a normal healthy part of life. But brutal violence? Bring it on and then laugh. Absolutely no way those scenes were anything but stomach churning. At least to those of us with any empathy.
I knew what I was getting into with a Tarantino film but the pluses of this film don’t begin to out weigh the gratuitous violence.
38
No mention of the fact that the end of the movie is the first time you see the title? That moment when "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" appears as if literally out of a fairy tale is supposed to be the moment when you 'get it'.
It's not perfect and there are moments that ring false, but those feel more silly than sinister. I'm not a fan of excessive violence, misogyny, or Tarantino, but this movie is a completely undisguised fairy tale with all of a fairy tale's clichés and tropes and either you go with it, or you don't.
29
This movie is a work of fiction. Why should it be anything other than that? For @kylebuchanan to expect QT to accurately reflect the events of the Manson murders is nothing short of smug, presumptuous, and unimaginative, honestly. Why must it allow for "Tate and her gentle friends" the chance to fight for (and win) their own lives? Isn't the point of a work of fiction to be just that? I never got the sense that the narrative was, as @kylebuchanan says "If I had been there I could have stopped it." In fact, I felt it was more a tome on the randomness of life. The can of dog food, the acid laced cigarette, the dog, the flamethrower, the Manson crew meeting Dalton and changing their plan at the last minute, the trip to Spahn Ranch. Change one small instance, and it's a different story. It's fiction for a reason, historical or otherwise. I loved QT's longing for one more random act that would have changed this horrible bit of history. This movie was beautiful, even with the violence. It's reimagining of the that fateful night left me with a bittersweet sense of things loved and lost and longed for (and no, not the time when "manly men" were men), and keener sense that it is the random circumstances surrounding our lives that are the true drivers of our fates. And I'm still thinking about it.
68
I doubt that this was Mr. Tarantino’s intention but, after seeing his film, I’m beginning to see eerie parallels between Charles Manson and Donald Trump—both paranoid cult-leaders of “families,” who thrive on conspiracy theories, demand unconditional loyalty, whose every action is driven by revenge or spite, and are intent on mounting a “Helter-Skelter” style race war.
37
In this time of “presentism” when progressives act as if their vision has reached the acme of virtue, justice, equality, in other words the end of history, it is great that movies like Tarantino’s remind us of other narratives, times and possibilities. Actually, “presentism” is itself like a movie narrative and it’s “truth” is taken far too literally: now we are finally “woke” to the endpoint of history when the patriarchy’s grip has been finally loosened, when western civilization is going to be replaced with a new conception, when the injustices of the past are rectified. Any variation from this story is racist, sexist, noninclusive, etc. So Tarantino breaks from wokeness and hearkens back to politically incorrect history, John Wayne, the ‘60’s, a history, more complex, fun, malleable, dramatic, morally ambiguous than anything imagined by the puritan wokesters.
22
I do believe it may be my favorite of his movies I've seen. The ending simply strikes one with the notion that, well, that's sure how it SHOULD have gone, but of course sadly, it didn't.
That kid; fantastic.
Those two; fantastic. Do some more movies, you guys. You work incredibly well together.
59
I would never have expected a Tarantino film to set off perhaps the most powerfully tender, honest, and rattlingly resonant emotional response to a movie that I can recall. As we returned our jaws and our theater seats to their original positions after seeing OAT...IH, my son and I started to discuss how much more and less layered the experience of this movie, most especially the ending, would be to different audience members depending on age, cultural awareness, etc. As we continued our walk and talk to our cars, 34-year-old son asking about my impressions compared to his, I was swiping tears away as I tried to explain the mixture of wondrous delight & awful trepidation I'd felt getting to "go to the movies" with a happy, intact Sharon Tate. By the time talk turned to the ending, I was a weeping, laughing mess. IN August 1969 I was a miserable, sensitive 13-year-old hippie wannabe from New Jersey being jostled along some dusty backroad of my parents' Deep South homeland in the backseat of a Chrysler Imperial, when I first heard a radio news report about the Cielo Drive massacre. The Bickersons up front hadn't heard or didn't care, so the extreme, incomprehensible horror and terrible sadness I felt, as all else, had to be stuffed down and kept to myself. Ever since. Quentin Tarantino not only opened that long-locked chamber of my young heart, he met its hurts and impossible yearnings with impossible joys, hope, relief (and revenge) realized.
101
Just because a character doesn’t have a lot of lines doesn’t make them any less a character. I think Lon Chaney has proved that point. Provided, there is time and effort spent with a person in movie that highlights their personality and story arc. Tate (Robbie) is treated as metaphor for optimism and happiness despite working in an industry that is dismissive. We see this in her scenes at the movie theater and with her friend in her rented home. Just because she didn’t fit in a popular trope purposely meant to “empower” doesn’t make it any less significant. Her character just isn’t trendy.
38
Enjoyed the movie and ending. Was refreshing to see adult oriented , original movie. Extraordinary acting, superb production values and creative. Few movies today deliver -this one does.
37
Sorry but I found this movie to be a self-indulgent bore. Tate's character (or lack of character) is shocking. She is portrayed as a "dumb blond," bare-foot and pregnant (literally). I suppose that's meant to be amusing. Tarantino's fawning over Pitt and DiCaprio makes for dull movie-making. Long shots of them walking, or driving and looking "manly" are yawn-inducing. The gory payoff that Tarantino fans wait for at the end it so over-the-top that it's hard to feel anything and you just observe the director's work...he is good at gore. What makes this male oriented movie more creepy is remembering the way Tarantino disregarded the personal safety of his female star Uma Thurman during his filing of Kill Bill...I swore I wouldn't see another one of his movies, wished I kept my vow!
55
@Thinker
Since you broke your vow, I guess that meant you had to watch the film to the very end, right? Why didn’t you just walk out if you found it to be so dull, especially if you despise Tarantino? Since you did not walk out, did you happen to notice that Uma Thurman’s daughter Maya Thurman-Hawke (who played the wonderful character Robin in this season’s Stranger Things) made a cameo appearance as one of the Manson cult members?
32
@Thinker, I think you pretty much described any Tarantino movie there.
9
I very much enjoyed the film - while I have been a fan of the writer-director since his debut, I am capable of acknowledging his flaws - generally overlong films, dialogue that can be too clever by half.
First and foremost, HOLLYWOOD is the least self-conscious film that Tarantino has made. It flows along without the slightest moments of "he's laughing at his own joke, here."
Too many people are interpreting the film through a lens of "it's supposed to be a Manson murders film" or "it misses the turmoil of the sixties!"
This is an homage to a transitional period in Hollywood and to a type of actor who was being left behind.
I loved the ending. Yes, it is extremely violent, but the ending gives these murderous monsters the treatment that *they* deserved.
While the Sharon Tate character could have been given more depth, what we saw her primarily and importantly given was innocence. A more complicated character would have left her open to personal critique, something that would have been inappropriate, here. ALL of the real-life victims were portrayed with grace. None were less than completely sympathetic.
When I read HELTER SKELTER in the seventies, the victims were people, but they were also 'Hollywood types' that could make one forget that they weren't characters but people.
Quentin Tarantino's handling of the material did the noblest of things - it restored humanity to these innocent victims who haven't spoken for fifty years.
61
I thought, despite my appreciation of the excellent work by every single actor/actress in the film, this was sophomoric, sexist and racist. Bruce Lee picking fights on his own set, and being instantly beat by an aging stunt actor? Just to set up Pitt's credentials for the final fight?
Cliff Booth's apparent murder of his wife is just a throwaway back story (and sly reference to Natalie Wood's death years later). When Dalton gets married, his wife is asleep just about the whole time, so any real personality doesn't interrupt the depiction of the glorious bro-relationship of the male leads. Dalton even abandons her after her horrible experience, supposedly because she has taken a dangerous number of sleeping pills. (Explain that logic). Even an eight year old girl exists in the movie primarily to validate Dalton's depth as a reader and greatness as an actor.
The Manson cult (who were white supremecists, rather than true hippies), is depicted first as a creepy matriarchy, calling on men only to help out in physical crises, but Manson himself is mostly a ghost, and the fact that Tate Labianca murders were actually an attempt to extract a male member for his liability on a murder is overlooked.
The main point seems to be a fantasy that by saving Polanski's young wife, "old" Hollywood as Tarentino imagined it, is saved for Dalton and Cliff Booth, and Tarentino's usual baroque violence can be savored because it is directed against the Mansonites (against mostly women).
10
@D
It's a movie - a Tarantino movie no less. Were you expecting a politically correct and historically accurate portrayal of people, place and time? Enjoy it for what it is or not, but get a grip.
18
@D Pretty sure that fight with Bruce Lee took place only in Cliff's head.
8
Although my wife and I hadn't been out to a movie palace in several years, preferring to either use pay per view or Netflixs but thought the new Tarantino flick would be worth the trip. We weren't disappointed. We felt at the end of the film that QT threw some of his best, most uniquely Hollywood art up on the screen. So yes, this film was a throwback to such wang bangers as 'Resevoir Dogs' but it had the better acting and tongue in cheek plot like that of a 'Jackie Brown'.
And no, it didn't bother us a bit that QT gave himself license to alter history by making sure that Sharon Tate and friends lived, and instead made sure that some of the Manson crew got what everyone would have loved to have seen them get- We were in fact grateful that we did not have to sit through a rehash of those horribly senseless killings on Cielo Dr by those degenerates.
To sum up our take on Tarantino's latest, I only have to refer to one of the Stones songs NOT used in the film: 'I Know It's Only Rock and Roll (But I like It)'.
24
Why were people surprised about this? Having seen both Inglorious Basterds and Django, I was well schooled in the idea that this director would rewrite history as he saw fit.
11
It’s a movie. A Tarintino movie. Do you really expect him to make a historically accurate documentary?
15
@Paulie. If you are using real names of real people, especially those horribly tragic victims of the Manson murders, yes.
11
Seriously, the NYT considers this worthy of space?
“Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” allows Tate and her gentle friends no cathartic moment of fighting for their own lives and winning. Instead, that moment goes to old-fashioned manly men who might have mused, “If I were there, I could have stopped it.”
The misandry is par for the course where the NYT's "cultural" coverage is concerned, but the rest is sheer drivel, to anyone who's read "The Family" or any other serious investigation of the murders.
Grow up. Please.
13
This will be my last Tarantino film. I grew up in LA and turned 16 in 1969, and what Tarantino gets in obsessive detail about the era he misses in capturing the soul and tone. It's a beautiful, but regressive hetero bro movie with some awe inspiring acting scenes by Di Caprio. But what's with the 'beaner' joke?
With the re-writes of "Inglourious Basterds" and now "Once Upon a Time..." it seems as though these endings are less about revenge and more about some kind of hope-for fantasy ending for our collective unbearable angst about real tragedy. Finally, in the end I've had it with the glorification and 'artful' depiction of gore.
38
@joel m. The "beaner" joke, as I recall, comes from DiCaprio's character as he's portraying a mid-19th-century western outlaw. What, you expect wokeness from an 1860 criminal?
36
Junk, pure and simple. Tarantino couldn't care less about the Tate murders, except as a schlocky excuse to pay tribute to all the lowbrow pop culture commercialism of the late 60s he loves, from dumb TV westerns to even dumber--and hyper-sexist--James Bond movie ripoffs. You wade through over two hours of of boring prelude featuring his two vapid buddies only to come to a ridiculous, ghoulisly violent, moronically revisionist climax that wants to show how these two clowns saved Tate from the Manson murders. Why? Because no blonde babe with a killer body like hers should ever die. That's all Tarantino's got. In my just fantasy world, this putrid Hollywood ending would end Tarantino's career.
16
Tarantino should have given a little thought to realism at the end. I mean, would the cops have quietly left the scene shortly after the killing of three people, one via flame-thrower? I don’t think so. Sure, we know those killed were the bad guys. But the cops would not have known that right away. What the heck! Party on Garth!
2
"Once Upon a Time. . ." is another gory Tarantino revenge movie. It expresses Tarantino's contempt for Manson and hippies generally, and his wishful thinking, half a century later, about the fate that should have befallen Manson and his followers -- a satisfying outcome for the audience. Like in "Kill Bill" Tarantino demonstrates the ability to make over-the-top gore not only palatable, but also justifiable, satisfying and even humorous.
The real gold to be mined here is the pleasure of seeing these two veteran actors display their chops in a memorable bromance between icons of "laid-back cool."
9
I have no idea why Tarantino has ever been considered anything more than a schlockmeister with a hate on for women.
28
@P. Maher
I have been trying to find an answer to that question for years. Movies from the mind of a 12-year old boy.
"schlockmeister with a hate on for women" is one for the ages. Well said!
14
I'm sick of all the violence in film. Tarantino is the worst. Hard skip!
11
If you care to watch Tarrantino films, you know he killed off Hitler and fans enjoyed it. If you are not a Tarrantino fan, I'm not sure why you bothered to go to this one and make a comment here. If he can kill off Hitler, then why not save Sharon Tate who comes off as the face of innocence in this film?
11
This movie absolutely had no plot what so ever. This is a character driven movie that provides an alternation version of history. This alternate version of history is not very interesting. Only one scene with Leo stood out.
After an hour into the movie, you realize there is not an actual plot to the story. After two hours you begin cursing everyone in theater for checking their phones. When the movie finally ends, you'll be angry you gave up that 3 hours of your life.
If only this movie had an actual plot.
11
I very much enjoyed the movie. A very creative screenplay based on some historical facts. Great characters and acting and excellent music. The reviewer and some of the commentators are being overly critical and analytical. One of the purposes of movies is to entertain and this movie entertained me. On the analytical side, I will say that I think the movie is full of a number of interesting dialectical themes. (I will save you by not discussing them here). The primary connection I can make to current times is the movie illustrates what horrible things vulnerable people (the Manson followers) are capable doing under the influence of a sociopath. The ending is a cartoonish fantasy expressing what the rest us sometimes feel like doing to those on the "dark side." (For what it's worth, I was 22 years old in 1969 and returned from Vietnam about 3 weeks after Manson and his followers murdered Sharon Tate, et al).
16
I am not always a fan of Tarantino's movies but I did enjoy this one. Now, I have read Helter Skelter so for me it was interesting to see how they loosely tied the two very separate stories. And of course, given that we know what happened in real life it was enjoyable to see the Manson Family get their comeuppance. Thought the all the actors did a great job! But reading Helter Skelter before you see the movie makes it more enjoyable.
11
It's a brilliant ending. The French call it a coup de theatre. And it's set up so well. All those scenes at the Spahn Ranch... creepy... funny... wreaking of tension. Then there's Cliff's backstory of killing his wife... Brandy that mean looking dog... The showdown with Bruce Lee... It all brings us right up to the eventful night. Still there's no hint at what's going to happen. We think that the Manson gang is going to the Tate/Polanski house. But when they go to the wrong house.. and find a stoned out Cliff... There isn't a sound in the theatre. And the choreography of action that follows is sublime. The audience realizing what's happened breakouts in cheers and applause... Hollywood is a land of fairy tales and this one, the revenge of the Tate murders is not just about the stars... It's a fairy tale for all of us who have lived with the murders and the arrogant and vile Manson family for 50 years.
77
@marrtyy. Thank God at least one commenter on this movie doesn't seem to think that you need a Phd in Film History or crime forensics to enjoy this movie. Much better than the wiz bang special effects laden and monotonously self referencing troubled costumed super hero drivel that has come ozzing out of Hollywood of late.
23
I loved the ending! The vulture critic is way off base. The movie is not about Tate; it's an homage to a nostalgic look at Hollywood, and two aging actors in particular. Tate is covered in a sweet way, especially when she soaks in the accolades of her movie audience. The fact that Tate was not given a chance to "get even" is missing the point. That Manson's peeps were killed instead of doing the killing is more cos of a random happenstance, and essentially the "wish" we all, likely including Tate and the others, would have loved to have seen. Plus, the reviewer here fails to mention how Sebring and Tate actually adore Rick Dalton, and Tate does indeed rush out to hug him when she welcomes him into her home for drinks after the awful incident. C'mon man, get it right!
24
Like most, if not all, of Tarentino's films, an adult comic book...
1
My white, teenage, video addicted sons like Tarantino movies. That's all I'm going to say.
8
We walked out of this movie about an hour and a half into it. It was one of the most boring, self indulgent, tedious films I have ever not sat through.
Horrifyingly bad would be better than endless, endless boredom.
5
@Concerned Mother- Did you perhaps consider it "boring" because so many people have become unaccustomed to films with actual dialogue?
22
Relax. It's just a movie and meant for entertainment purposes only. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. It was interesting. I was only a 7 years old when this terrible murders happened, but know of this history of this fateful and horrible night. DeCaprio and Pitt were remarkable and very impressive in their acting roles. Also a special shout out to the fabulous acting canine costar Brandy! The ending was not only very harrowing, but wishful and somewhat bittersweet for me. If only in real life would the events of August 9,1969 actually took place as depicted in the movie it would have been a wonderful thing.... If only. I think Mr. Tarantino but a wonderful fictional twist on a real life horrific event......If only.
RIH Sharon along the rest of the innocent lives loss @ the hands of murderous, crazy Manson Clan madmen and women.
18
Tarantino hypnotized me into believing this was a film about the
Tate/LaBianco murders. The surreal film ending was telegraphed when the self avowed hippie hating protagonist took acid. I realized what would happen next would be a totally unpredictable trip. Gory but mezmorizing to consider.
Thanks, Q.T.!
15
This movie is really all about Tarantino indulging his nostalgia for late '60s Hollywood, and you can tell he loved every minute of it. He is in no rush in this movie. He takes his time in every scene, pacing it more like "Jackie Brown" than "Pulp Fiction," luxuriating in fantastically detailed and evocative sets that make you feel as if you are in a time machine.
As a life-long Angeleno, I was thrilled to see Wilshire Blvd., Hollywood Blvd., and Westwood Village as it was when I was a boy. He could have done '69 in a campy way, but he resisted that. In one scene there is a tiny glimpse of a bench ad for George Putnam News which didn't need to be there, but which he chose just for the authenticity of it.
He uses the Manson murders as a way to create and build tension while he spends time adoring the scenes that take place in bars, in trailers and on t.v. sets that have nothing to do with the murders.
It's a very good movie, that stuck with me.
As for the ending, the comic-horror violence he uses is classic Tarantino, and disturbing mostly in that he tries to create comedy out of it. Given the otherwise non-shocking feel of the movie it felt a bit tacked on, and another Tarantino indulgence.
11
One hour too long and no story to speak of - go if you’ve nothing better to do. Particularly excruciating: watching the female lead watch herself in a movie, wiggle to music at every opportunity, and beam wide empty smiles AT EVERYTHING.
11
Sparing Tate and her friends at the end brought a lightness to the film which was unexpected- even to someone who’s seen all of Tarantino’s’ movies, and who thought that the Hitler killing scene in ‘Basterds’ was really dumb. Tate was portrayed as a possibly not-to-bright free spirit who brought joy to those around her, and her welcoming the fading, not-to-bright, cowboy star into her home at the end was, for me, a satisfying fairytale ending. Also, the dog stole every scene he was in.
11
I've boycotted Tarantino for a decade because I became utterly disgusted with his sadistic revenge pornography. I made the mistake of ending my boycott to see this film. While most of the film plays like an early Paul Thomas Anderson effort (long, plodding, self indulgent and aimless), Tarantino couldn't resist assaulting his audience with yet another orgy of sadistic violence at the film's climax. What makes Tarantino so repugnant is not just that he loves violence, but that seeks out historical victims to carry out his sadistic fantasies, in an effort to use history's most sympathetic characters to legitimize his sadistic rage. It's remarkable to me that so many of the same intellectuals who curse our violent culture praise the work of Quentin Tarantino.
23
I’m surprised that this article didn’t even mention the meaning of the ending of the movie...., it just gave away the ending.
The movie is a nostalgic piece about the good ole days of cinema and how soiciety was changing at that time. It was 1969, a pivotal time in America. The Hollywood movie star of the previous era was fading, Dalton was fading and the idea of America was fading. It was being replaced by the counter culture that was represented in the movie by the hippies and the Manson women. The murders as they happened in real life were a symbolic end to that classic era and the beginning of a new one represented by the counter culture.
In Tarantino’s version of the story, the hippies don’t kill the Hollywood star - Tate. The hippies die in the most fabulous fashion possible. Tarantino is saying his version of history would have the classic Hollywood and idea of America win and the hippies lose.
That was the meaning of the ending.
8
@Kev
It is that "meaning" which I find so offensive. Why does QT locate those "good ole days" exclusively with white male stars and violent movies and tv shows? The moral chaos and extreme violence QT seems to lover were not characteristic of the 1960's era. 1969 featured far more love stories and family sitcoms than there are today. Even the westerns of the day were moral fable with heroes (and occasionally heroines, - the original True Grit was a 1969 movie) who restored justice.
If QT is to be praised (as many have done here) for accurately portraying an earlier era, he should also be criticized for inaccuracies and narrowness of his point of view. His vision that misogynistic, men literally besotted with their bromance were the protectors against violence and moral chaos because of their inherent ability to use even greater violence, is the implied "meaning" I find troublesome.
And just for the real "historical" truth, the Mansons were actually white supremecists, not "hippies." The hippies believed in universal love. Manson believed in, and was trying to incite a race war. That type of evil and violence remains with us today.
12
@Kev I'm not sure this tragedy was for Quentin Tarantino to own, exploit, and revise for his own benefit. No, he's not a documentarian/reporter. But he does have some responsibility to the survivors and their families (of which there are many) and I find his blowing them off for his own aggrandizement tacky and best, immoral at least.
4
Watching the bad guys get literally torched and smashed was hilarious. Everyone in the theater thought so. Me too.
12
Arguably the harshest treatment goes to the Manson gang member who monologues that "Hollywood taught us to kill people, so it's only appropriate we kill the people who taught us".
To me, it seems Tarantino (a director of violent films) is
1) making her the mouthpiece of the criticism he has been the subject of: "Film violence can be confounded with real-life; it teaches people how to be violent. Society should stop that culture."
2) putting a target on her head.
Tarantino then spends the most screen-time in this scene dispatching this character in brutal and over the top (cinematic?) ways, demonstrating that he rejects the argument: "If I thought that were true you wouldn't be watching this and this happen, would you? Hey viewer, would you ever do or think of doing THIS? A movie is a fiction, not reality. Get off my lawn." The fiction/fairie tell aspect is only played up by Dicaprio getting to meet Tate at the end.
I have mixed feelings about the final effect and the argument, but I thought it was a clever...execution of a point he wanted to make
10
Well steeped in the story of the Manson murders- I read the great book Helter Skelter in the mid 70's while in high school- I was fully expecting to witness the brutal slayings of Tate and her friends, and frankly was not looking forward to it. It would have been a sad downer after what is essentially a rollicking fun ride of a film. So Tarantino's ending was both a shock and a pleasure, and a wish fulfillment that the bad guys- Manson's tribe- were stopped cold in their tracks. A Hollywood ending, indeed, but that's the whole point of the film.
18
This movie brought 1969 Los Angeles back to life, particularly the film industry. The cinematography was amazing. This film is meant to be seen on the big screen and it's Tarantino at his best. Pitt and DiCaprio had great chemistry. The supporting cast should not be overlooked especially Margot Robbie, Bruce Dern, Mike Moh, Kurt Russell and Michael Hammond. I saw this with my 67 year old mother and we both loved it. Like everyone else in the theater, we laughed through the entire ending. Although there was a feeling of, "If only....?"
12
Tarantino has always been a Scorsese wannabe, but where Marty makes you feel the violence and its consequences, Quentin treats it as a joke - the audience at my screening was laughing at the ending. Disturbing in the #MeHate-Trump era.
6
My wife and I saw it together and loved it. It was perfectly set up to deliver maximum cathartic effect. It was a fantasy — stopping the psychotic murders of Tate and her guests, and instead doling our some just intervention to the murderous creeps who were unlucky enough to encounter Cliff and his pit bull when they brazenly burst into Rick Dalton’s home.
We thought it was great.
But why have you put this spoiler information into your article without warning readers? Our enjoyment of the movie would have been significantly dimmed had we known of the “surprise ending” from the outset.
9
@Scott
He gives a warning about spoilers right up front.
1
@Scott
I see that you DID put the spoiler alert at the top of the article. Sorry I misstated that.
3
There is a spoiler alert at the top of the article, in italics. Plus, the headline makes clear that the subject of the article is the ending of the movie.
It was a Hollywood ending (not a documentary ending). And I thought it was perfect and poignant, especially since I viewed the entire film as a love letter to old Hollywood and most especially to Sharon Tate. Everyone knows how she was savagely murdered by the Manson maniacs, so this film helps us remember how she lived — as a beautiful and effervescent young woman. I read that her sister approved of the film, so that says a lot to me to in terms how Quentin Tarantino paid tribute to her memory.
21
I had figured something along these lines would be the ending since the NYT has gleefully mentioned so many times previously that Tarantino loves to re-write history and then referenced Inglourious Basterds. For once, can the NYT not take pleasure in ruining the viewer's experience? I read this article with the spoiler alerts simply because the NYT had already implied as much last week. I guess they had to spell it out for the three people who might have missed those implications.
3
After reading this, the verdict is clear: reviewers are congenitally incapable of authoring a review free of sociocultural pandering. Everything is about men vs women, or women vs men. Everything is defined by politicized touchstones that are reflexively invoked at every turn. Get back to the art, ladies and gentleman. What does it say? What does it accomplish? What is the quality and reach of its execution? You can do this. You can be honest.
15
I will not watch Tarantino films because of the extreme violence he always features, so I am commenting here solely about Brandy the dog. The pit bull with the cruelly mutilated ears. Please, film directors and casting directors, when you choose a dog for your productions, consider the effect the breed and conformation of that dog has on skewing public taste! People will see Brandy being amazing in this film, and decide they want a red pittie with cut ears (until they tire of the pup they purchased and dump it at the pound). When purebreds are featured in films, it always fuels the purchasing of puppies, followed by a surge in that breed turning up in shelters about a year later. But it’s the cropped ears that I’m talking about here. Ear cropping is an extremely painful, unnecessary, purely cosmetic procedure. It is banned in the UK and elsewhere, and for good reason. Tarantino could have used a pit bull with natural ears, but chose Brandy. Why? I don’t remember seeing that style of cropped ear on bully breeds in 1969. It must have been an aesthetic choice for this film, to choose that particular dog. In choosing Brandy, with those mutilated ears, the filmmaker promotes a cruel and inexcusable practice. It’s animal abuse, and you are saying that it’s beautiful.
9
Or maybe QT meant to reinforce idea that Cliff Pott, with his many faults, rescued people and other living things.
6
I continue to be puzzled by the rave reviews of this film. I love Tarantino's work - Pulp Fiction, Inglorious Basterds, etc, but this one fell flat for me, and at 3 hours, was a long, boring ride.
I do note that the Rotten Tomatoes fan rating continues to drop. Perhaps others feel the same as I do about it.
6
@Joe I have to agree. I love all of QT's work but this one was not his best or even in the top 5. The acting was phenomenal, the atmosphere extraordinarily well done but it is very long and slow. It's certainly no Hateful 8, one of my most-loved QT films but I'd put it ahead of Death Proof, my least-liked QT film.
3
Fifty years from now, someone should make a movie about a young film geek named Quentin Tarentino who makes a heist movie where the big scene is one of the crooks cutting off a cop's ear. But in this movie's ending, the film is a dud and box office failure and Quentin Tarentino never gets to make another movie.
Yeah, someone should make that movie.
7
I am grateful for the reveals here, as I was planning to see the movie with someone who likes Tarantino's work. But I have no appetite for this and will see something else instead.
3
The problem with Tarantino is that the only thing he knows are movies and the cultural signals that come from them. He also seems to be something of an arrested adolescent fantasizing about what he would have done or what would have happened if only he was involved. He certainly has no obligation to reality or truth, just flashy entertainment which is ultimately empty.
Perfect director for the Trump Age.
9
Tarantino loves movies, he often says 'I didn't go to film school, I went to films'. If you ever watched Spaghetti Westerns (that the name of the movie is inspired by) you'll know that they often change history and use real events and characters to tell a fictional story. This movie was made for movie lovers - people unfamiliar with those types of westerns of the 1950s and 60s won't get the film.
13
When QT makes his film about the Alamo, do we win?
When Magellan sails around the world in his film, does he make it past the Philippines?
To make a revisit of a historic event (and most films take generous creative license with the facts anyway) and then dramatically change the outcome seems to speak to this being honestly billed as a flight of fantasy. Maybe fun to watch the big stars (Pitt is a talent who carefully chooses what work he signs on to do) on screen, but to completely suspend disbelief earlier on in the viewing process.
4
@reid-If you ever watched Spaghetti Westerns (that the name of the movie is inspired by) you'll know that they often change history and use real events and characters to tell a fictional story. This movie was made for movie lovers - people unfamiliar with those types of westerns of the 1950s and 60s won't get the film.
5
The critics, both in real life and here in the comments section are forgetting one very fundamental aspect of Tarantinos style:
He is an entertainer, first and foremost, through telling of compelling story with plenty of plot twists and the ever popular out of order style that is common for Tarantino when he unfolds a story.
He has also shown in past films that he has no problems with rewriting history in his quest to present a great story, a story always assembled within often retro and nuanced settings and character styles.
I also like that Tarantino will not do a film just for money and fame. He does films he wants to do. He does films based on scripts he loves and feels he can produce and direct in rich ambiance and themes.
I sincerely hope he gets his chance with his self-announced last film yet to be made.. one that takes place somewhere in the Star Wars Universe... because I genuinely believe he can and will shake up the cut and paste story telling and styling that has taken over Star Wars movies since Lucas retired.
6
Did everyone see a different movie than I did?
Yes to the craftsmanship and look and feel of this film, and the idea to change history. I'm from the 60s, and I did like the idea of this revenge ending.
However, this was perhaps the most boring Tarantino film ever. Empty dialog. Too long. When the violence came it was just comic cliche.
Some priceless dialog a la Vincent and Jules would have made this classic Tarantino in the making, but it was not to be.
8
Chills literally ran up and down my spine because of the perfect sets and scenery evoking 1969. I couldn't get enough of them and will need to see the film a second time to simply absorb the intensity of the cultural vibe. All beautifully and truthfully honed for me-someone who was a young person in that time-and whose life was greatly influenced by the late 60s.
27
Agree totally. I wonder though if youngsters will appreciate how perfectly the film portrays that era, which is a key factor in liking the film or not.
10
@Terry
That's exactly what I experienced. I felt like I was there, in that time and place, once again. I could smell the smog.
13
I’m a story analyst. The character flips to sudden violence is inconsistent with character, starting with Cliff at the hippie ranch and ending with Dalton’s flames when the woman is clearly already dying.
I’m also a modern person. I’m done with the outdated points of view of Tarantino.
7
@kai ning Unfortunately you write like a lot of story analysts I've known. The "flips to sudden violence" were not only utterly believable-there actually are people like that, in real life-but set up well in the script. As for Dalton-that too, as you know if you were paying attention, was set up-and of course, it was played for comic effect. You know, OTT(look that one up). But stay modern and keep those better stories coming!
5
Was the flip to violence really that out of character for Cliff? That was his entire backstory, veteran of unstated war, the unknown of how his wife died, the stupid fight with Bruce Lee that ended what was left of his career and the slashed tire at Spahn Ranch. The willingness to use violence to defend someone else was why he goes into that house to find Spahn. We have seen enough horror stories to envision how that situation could end. Yet he still goes down the hall into the dark room. Something else drives this guy besides common sense.
13
Cliff is rumored to have killed his wife, and he beats up Bruce Lee. His violent tendencies are there all along.
6
Despite the excellence of every actor and every character was not merely secondary to the bro-mance but subservient to them and to the fantasy that Tarentino could have saved (his vision of) Hollywood, if only he and his characters could have been back there.
Bruce Lee, picks (and quickly loses) fights on the set just to set up Cliff Booth's superhuman fighting ability? (absurd)?
Cliff Booth's murder of his wife is tossed in as a minimal "backstory". We are still meant to cheer for the charming guy, because he's played by a star with a charming smile.
When Dalton gets married, the wife is so unimportant that she sleeps through every scene, and we are so supposed accept her husband's abandonment of her after a horrible experience BECAUSE she took a dangerous number of sleeping pills.
Even the 8 year old girl exists mainly to praise and cheer up Dalton.
The ending seemed to have two themes (1) a fantasy that QT could have saved Tate (and the glamour she symbolizes) if only his proxies were there and (2) an excuse for his baroque violence, which the audience can enjoy, because hey, they were just Mansonies (one of whom dares to criticizes pulp culture violence).
13
Bruce Lee did not lose the fight. The character made that point clear and QT would never make Bruce Lee lose a fight. The point was Cliff would risk physical damage to prove a point, however minor and maybe asinine the point was. He was not an actor. As the Bruce Lee character stated, he, like Ali, went off the written page. No game over, no reset. The purpose of the child actor was to impress on Dalton that people took this work seriously. Do not do it if you don’t bring your best to it. When you get the opportunity to show the stuff of you are made, do not waste it. As for the torching, he wanted it said that he was the kind of guy that brought a flamethrower to a knife fight. The Sean Connery character in the Untouchables would have done it the same way.
4
Movies like this, movies that look fondly back on a bygone era should always be told from a child's point of view. Children naturally see the wonder in all things while grown adults are sad, desperate creatures. I guess a Movie director becomes the child in this scenario, casting everything from that period in a golden glow. 50 years from now, a movie director will come along and make a movie about 2019 in which the period is seen as a much better and simpler time than whatever time and circumstances the viewers find themselves then, in a polluted , more crowded, much warmer world, 2019 may be seen as Eden. Every era from the past is always better than now, because we are not there.
3
Did you see the same movie I did? Rather than viewing 1969 as a golden era my reaction was “what were we thinking”. Followed quickly by remembrance that a vicious and unjust war was going on and eating the young.
2
I saw the movie, and while I enjoyed the exploits of the two main characters I watched with dread as the movie progressed toward Sharon Tate's impending murder.
I remember when I was a kid, how horrific the Sharon Tate-La Bianca murders were and how they shocked an America reeling from a shocking decade, civil rights improvements and the moon landing notwithstanding. I remember how evil Charles Manson and his cult seemed - something, perhaps, that the movie got right. But while watching this revisionist history I still felt sadness because it didn't erase Sharon Tate's death, which must have been every bit as horrendous as the events depicted in the movie. I figured in the end, that this was simply another one of Tarantino's creepily violent and misogynist fantasies. I suppose he fantasizes himself in Brad Pitt's role.
13
The grand trick in this film is beyond acting alone. It might be one of the few films in memory that changes genres on the audience. At first, it seems like a period piece revolving around the Tate murders and Manson cult. Tarantino takes the audience down this period piece road but then changes at the end ... to a fairy tale.
He places his characters at the center of these grand historical moments in time and watches them interact with the great characters in history. This technique is close to that particular literary niche-genre invented by EL Docotrow one of the great novelists of the 20th century. It is the Doctorow technique of inserting his characters into important events of the past.
In the end, two fading heroes of the movie industry become heroes in real life. This is really the fairy tale told my Tarantino.
In the end, we are reminded that the words “Once upon a time” always begin a fairytale. And in the end, this is what Tarantino has told us. Not a period piece surrounding a horrible event many remember. But rather a fairytale around this event.
19
"Tate isn’t treated as much more than a trophy."
I disagree. While Tate does not feature in depth in the film's plot, her personhood is given depth and dimension. The sequence where she drops in on a screening of the Matt Helm film she starred in (The Wrecking Crew) is the crux of that.
Margot Robbie's performance in that sequence is heartfelt and brilliant and Tarantino's direction throughout it elevates it to a celebration of Tate that takes her outside and beyond her cruel fate.
Key to that is Tarantino's decision to not substitute Robbie for Tate in the onscreen sequences from The Wrecking Crew that are shown. Instead we see Tate in her original, rather winning performance where, in effect, she takes a star turn decades after her untimely death.
The fact that in the film the Tate character is not murdered is late justice and, as done, good fun, but that she is shown to shine alongside stars like Robbie, Pitt, and DeCaprio is the film's real gift to her.
96
I enjoyed Tarantino's film and thought it was a good film about Hollywood's bygone era. As for the ending I thought it more of a "what if" scenario. It made me a bit nostalgic for that bygone era where filmmaking wasn't so corporate as it is now. Also the ending was a bit sad knowing what really did happen. The performances were all stellar, and to me it was a big love letter to Hollywood from Tarantino that he shared with us.
20
Unfortunately, Altamont was the same year....
4
I first moved to California in June '69. It was the month my father returned from his second tour in Viet Nam having been sent back there to shore up the "experience deficit" apparent after the Tet Offense. I was 8 and 1/2. It was both a dream, because my siblings and me were steeped in the warm sunny California spell we grew up with on tv and it also felt a little strange - a slightly dark dream.
Stories and events were bigger in California. Crime seemed bigger and a little more of it . . everywhere.
Still, it was pretty idyllic. A sunny place where our community swimming pool was jammed with kids our age and family camping trips to the close by Sierras were euphoric.
Then the news: an actress named Sharon Tate and her friends had been butchered just 300 miles away. Then more news the following day; The LaBianca's.
These events, rapidly at first, then more slowly, changed my life. Changed a lot of people's lives. It was the tallest glass of bad water a kid would be forced to drink. Even though the Viet Nam War was real and horrible. It was an extension, to me, an eight year old, of American doing right. Of John Wayne. Audie Murphy.
With the LA horror show, the sheen was off.
It was the apocalypse.
Fast forward to now: Tarantino did something I didn't imagine was possible; He became a shaman, telling and showing a different story for a few minutes. And it helped. It didn't change anything except my orientation to all involved. It helped.
34
This movie was an experience for me and one that I enjoyed. The movie was entertaining, it evoked dialog and for me a curiosity about a place I once called home that is going through another transformation. This to me is good art. Great acting, and execution of film making technique. This isn't a Great film but as one reviewer put it's a well acted, and a well shot movie. The ending was brilliant and it reminded the audience that this is a movie, a fictional story produced by artists for entertainment. The ending also served as personal stamp by the director to remind the audience that this is a Quentin Tarantino movie.
5
I didn't leave the film feeling Tate had been cheated in any way, shape, or form. Her character floats above the entire film, which really is a tacit paean to her, and it succeeds at that. The scenes of her going to the movies to see her own film are much more significant than having some unbelievable scene in which, somehow, a very pregnant Tate kills her assailants. And having her as only a vice at the end reinforced the wistfulness of what Tarantino has done.
The two borderline has-beens who enact the longed-for revenge on Manson's deluded acolytes do so purely by chance - one of them is even high: there's nothing "manly men" or Dudley DoRight about it. Instead it borders on farce. And all that did was add to the absurdity of it all, the "if only" constantly hovering over the film.
17
@Mark Sorry, that should have been "as a voice at the end."
I admit up front that what I am about to say is more my problem than Mr. Tarantino's.
"Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood" captures almost perfectly the images I carry around in my memory of what LA and Hollywood was like in 1969...to a 15 year old middle-schooler from southern Pennsylvania. The imagery, the hills, the backlots, the cars, the Playboy Mansion, the machoism untouched by the greater world of Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement - all of it was exactly how I remember thinking about it.
And I couldn't care less. Living through those times once was enough. I left after about an hour.
So, I missed the tricky ending. Now that I know about it, I still couldn't care less. It's simply Mr. Tarantino's homage to John Wayne riding in to save the day one last time, in a case where it could have really mattered.
Perhaps younger generations will enjoy the historic and cultural accuracy of the imagery. They should - it's really very good.
Don't get me wrong. I am not saying it's a bad movie. It's just that life in the rest of the country just wasn't that cool.
And, frankly, it wasn't that cool in Hollywood, either, if people were really paying attention. But there's a reason why we call it "LA-LA Land."
4
I confess I didn't mind the violence against the Manson women considering what they did. I wouldn't want the state to do that but I'm fine with it in a film. Having the murderers be brutally slaughtered in the film is kind of cathartic.
I don't think they disrespected Sharon. I thought Robie did an excellent job playing her.
The reality is if it had happened at another house besides the Tate house, the same thing would have happened. There were 4 people at the Tate home that night and none were able to stop it, certainly not the 8 1/2 month pregnant Sharon.
18
Hmm...I actually took the ending to mean we just watched a pre-cursor to the Tate murders, not that she and her guests lives were spared. Maybe because there were two other murders the day after Tate's--the Lo Biancas--a few miles away. But I've only seen Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained, so I'm not as familiar with Tarantino's taking license with history.
1
I am no fan of Tarantino's work with one exception. The film "True Romance" which has an excellent cast - Christopher Walken, Dennis Hopper, Christian Slater, Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini, Brad Pitt and Patricia Arquette - to name just a few of the actors in the film. Tarantino wrote it but he did not direct it. The director was Tony Scott
2
Could not agree more. True Romance gets my vote for the best Tarantino movie that’s not a Tarantino movie. I hear he was working at a video rental store when he wrote it. You can just imagine him telling his coworkers about the screenplay he’s writing with the coolest story ever. Tony Scott did a great job, too. Amazing that the same actor (Gary Oldman) played Drexel and Churchill.
1
@Idranoel i can confirm that is where he was at the time as told on the howard stern show (great interview for anyone who has not heard it)
i was found the film disappointing although i did love the fake shows/movies leo starred in (the clips that is)
@susan-I liked that movie until the scene where Dennis Hopper says the N-word about 50 times in a 5 minute period....I wonder what people would make of that today.
Kudos to Mr. Tarantino for once again demonstrating that original, creative and compelling film-making is alive and well in Hollywood—once upon a time and now. How ever one feels about his “Field of Dreams” ending—I loved it—it wouldn’t have been possible without the wonderful cameos leading up to it, everyone from Bruce Dern, as George Spahn, and Kurt Russell to Mike Moh, as Bruce Lee, and Damian Lewis, as Steve McQueen. While some have dismissed them and other details as “Trivial Pursuit for boomers” or “Easter eggs,” they, along with Cliff Booth’s/Brad Pitt’s moody extended visit to the Spahn Ranch, are essential building-blocks for the emotional impact of the conclusion. Although Lewis/McQueen is only on the screen for minutes, his back-story monologue about “messing up” is critical to the film, as so much of it, as well as the characters, are about what happens when they and we “mess up,” as individuals or as a society. People have attempted to assign “end-of-the-sixties” labels to everything from “Easy Rider to Altamont but, in so many ways, Tarantino here has succeeded in not just making a great film, but in displaying that such conclusions, whether in reel- or real-life, are never that simple. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” as well as its audience, are all the better for it.
30
The film sounds to me like another undisciplined mess of a film by Quentin Tarantino, with the shopworn compliments that Tarantino has this great breadth of knowledge of the pop-culture and is "paying homage" to various genres.
18
Would just like to thank the article and the comments for ruining the end of the film for the rest of us. I'll still see it, and I'm sure the end will still surprise, but not nearly as much as it is supposed to. Oh well.
2
@JAL
At the very beginning of the article - THIS -
The following article contains spoilers for “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood.”
I'm sorry you decided to read further. I made the point to go and watch the film within the first couple of days it came out and had I read the ending, it would not have made the huge impact it did for me. I was expecting something far worse and closer to the actual history and fate of Sharon Tate and her friends. I loved the film from the beginning to the end.
28
@JAL They did warn about spoilers at the beginning of the article. You should still see it though. It was great.
8
@JAL If you have seen previous Tarantino films, the ending would have been obvious. The only questions left unanswered until the end were whose house it would happen in and when would the vampires show up.
4
As for me, I was quite moved by the ending. I could feel my stomach tighten up whenever Quentin would switch to Tate and company. Having lived through those times, I realized how I was still grieving for those poor folks, especially a pregnant Sharon. I had to believe that Quentin was not going to put us through that wringer again, so the ending was very cathartic for me and I suspect, for many of my generation. Executing the scene with "cartoon violence" was actually the best way to keep it light-hearted while getting the job done. The end scene with Jay Sebring and the voice of Sharon and everyone coming out to greet Rick Dalton was sweet and touching and I appreciated that. Good on ya, Quentin!
79
@Johnny B I thought it was totally amazing, especially considering these people think they should get parole.
7
It was a wonderful movie. I turned 20 in 1969 and Tarentino captured the essence of the time perfectly. It was a joy to see three actors (in fact the entire cast) Robie, DiCaprio and Pitt showing their chops at the height of their skills as actors.
DiCarpro's acting, particularly in the hostage scene was simply over the top and demonstrates, again, that he is one of the finest movie actors on the planet.
Let't please not over analyze. It is a fantasy movie that calls the question, what would the world look like had things not turned so dark in 1969? Sure we had Woodstock, but the next year was Altamont and then things turned really dark. We never recovered that innocence.
33
@Mike I'm not sure there was that much "innocence" remaining around 1969, following the assassinations of JFK, RFK and Martin Luther King, Jr. There was the election of Nixon, the stepped-up war in Vietnam and resulting protests. The Tate-LoBianca murders removed whatever detachment from reality that still existed in the hills of Hollywood.
7
@Mike - This is for both Mike and Diane, who's replied below. I agree mostly with Mike - and if you've read my comment below or above you'll know where I'm coming from. It's about what age someone comes into these events at. Or more precise I suppose, what age when these events take place in one's life. Mike, although 20, was probably not the cynic that Abbie Hoffman was. And I was much younger. That year changed my orientation to the world. Tarantino just pushed it back a little. Not myopically but like drinking a glass of wine after really bad news.
5
@Diane Foster
We had the Partridge Family!
Many reviewers, mostly men, remark on the insignificant role Tate/Robbie plays in the film. She is not just “a trophy” in this film. She may not speak many words, but she’s the soul of the movie. As she delights in watching herself on screen, she’s every movie fan who gets caught up in the movies—even though she knows how that “magic” is manufactured. At the Playboy mansion, it is she we walk with into the fabled decadence and she is the one we watch dance. It’s her hair we watch float in the air, the quintessential Hollywood blonde in a convertible. No, as delightful as the Pitt/DiCaprio bromance is, it’s Tate’s fate we’re interested in.
47
@SNA I thought she did an excellent job and she looks so much like Sharon. I thought she captured what a wonderful person Sharon was as well.
9
Once upon a time there was a director who studied film better than anyone else. Then he decided to make his own films by putting his favorite bits into a mixer and mashing them all up. By working with familiar people, he was able to use our own preconceptions to help develop his characters quicker, and make the twists more poignant.
If you knew one of his favorite films of all time was “Rio Brave” then you fully understand this film- and if you know just a tiny bit about “Helter Skelter “ then you understand that it was being used to divert you from what you thought was coming.
Bravo Quentin, you’ve done it again. Given us something we weren’t expecting that will keep us talking about your movies forever.
Thank you.
50
I am not a Tarantino fan, but I went to see the film with my son who is. I really enjoyed it. The movie is not about Sharon Tate, it is about the two aging macho men and how they handle the decline in their careers. I liked the ending (although I closed my eyes through the violent scenes) simply because it was a pleasant surprise to see Sharon Tate have a happy ending. The "Once Upon a Time" in the title perhaps was a hint that the ending would not be as we expected.
18
The ending is polarizing and its approval/disapproval will likely break along generational lines. Many people like me, who are old enough to remember the Tate/Lo Bianca murders, will be disappointed, I suspect.
1
@Frank I remember them and I thought the ending was totally cathartic. This is a Tarantino film. He often messes with history and bravo for it. How I wish it had really ended that way. Debra Tate also gave her approval for this film.
12
Or maybe those of us that had to listen to the vile stories of this evil loser and the pathetic men and women that did his bidding in 1969 for the last 50 years got to see at least some of them get their just rewards and rest fall into the garbage disposal of obscurity. Plus a group of four or five people that did not deserve their fates got a second chance. Toss in a story where two has-beens, a wife and one brave, determined dog stepped up at the right time. Nothing there to disappoint this 14 year in 1969 movie goer.
7
I absolutely loved the film, and particularly the ahistorical twist of an ending. It was the ending to the story we all would have loved to have seen in real life, at least those of us that were in CA in 1969.
25
I saw "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" yesterday. Quentin Tarantino has a way of drawing the viewer into the story he is telling. I sat for 2 hours engrossed in the story. I agree with Kyle Buchanan that Tarantino prefers macho men. Dalton and Booth are tough Southern guys. He goes out of his way to depict "hippies" as dirty, self absorbed, clueless dolts. I knew the finale of the film would be a violent gore fest. I left before it appeared on screen. The best scene in the film is when Cliff Booth (Pitt) pays a visit to George Spahn (Bruce Dern). I recommend "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood." I'm glad I walked out of the ending.
2
@ken if I remember my history correctly, "hippies" were considered to be dirty, self-absorbed & clueless back in the '60's. As for walking out on the ending, I'm sorry you did that. It was executed (no pun intended) beautifully. Tarantino changed history & gave us a "Hollywood" ending. Who doesn't love a movie where the good guys win?
35
@Court Clerk Of course, hippies were none of those things. They were idealistic young people who helped stop a war and wanted to change the world. Manson and his "family" hurt a lot of those young people because older people began to associate them with that group. It was sad.
9
@Court Clerk
Most people who just looked at me in 1969 would have classified me as a hippie: long hair, beard, patched jeans. But that year I participated in a march on Washington, tutored inner city kids, and had a 3.2 grade point average at Syracuse University. There were all kinds of "hippies", pal!
10
The ending truly was fantastic. The reviewer notes the comic glee with which they kill the people in the ending and that is so accurate. I found myself laughing out loud as it was all going down and it wasnt until after I left the theater that I took a pause and thought about that...
32
I loved this film for many reasons, but here I'll just say thank god I could finally see a great film that has nothing to do with super heros or some sort of political or ecological Armageddon.
131
@R.F. Amen to that. I've basically stopped going to the movies, because I have no interest in superheroes. Saw OUATIH yesterday, and loved it from beginning to end. I'm still tearing up at the thought of Sharon and her friends surviving that night.
27
@R.F. you forgot not being a remake or a reboot of something that's been rehashed a thousand times before. Whatever happened to originality?
12
While I liked this review, I have to take exception to the idea that Sharon Tate is "sidestepped" and nothing more than "a trophy":
Tarantino goes out of his way to devote significant screen time to showing us the lovely soul in the blossoming of a career she clearly enjoyed, which was so tragically cut short in real life. Sharon Tate is "what might have been". If you want to call her something other than a nuanced character, call her that.
100
@Ellen Bottas Yes, I thought Margot beautifully captured Sharon and her innate kindness and decency.
24
Helter Skelter has been filmed before. This was QT's movie and he changed the real life ending to complete a movie he made about fake people. Brilliant. The violence is both cartoonish, like a lot of violence in QT's movies, and immediately satisfying to all of who remember that awful night. I can't imagine there is one person who wouldn't have wanted to have this happen, as if it could.
45
I haven't laughed so hard at a movie since Bridesmaids. What a fantastic take on those unspeakably horrible murders. No, we can't change history. But why shouldn't artists be allowed to explore alternative outcomes, especially ones born out of wishful thinking? My only complaint is Tarantino's love affair with the Western genre. DeCaprio was great in his role, but the scenes with him acting in Westerns could have been cut in half. They dragged the movie down a bit.
7
Many people under 40 do not realize what a big deal westerns were in the 50’s and early 60’s. Now they are a tiny subset of product, usually portrayed as examples of exploitation or ravaging some environment. The themes of those shows are in practically every successful action, fantasy of science fiction movie now made. QT spent some time trying how different the before was from the after yet a still a lot of the same.
8
Uh, it wasn’t really about Sharon Tate?
And it wasn’t an effort at all to “rob her and her friends of fighting for their own lives and winning”?
I did love that horror toward innocents was averted and isn’t that what movies can be about? This isn’t a documentary.
God lord, I find myself using that phrase so much these days as critics on all levels - from so-called professionals to many of my friends - angrily carp about stories being told in movies which do not strictly to a news or court report. And this is so often, usually, always stated - “based on an event” - at the get-go.
8
@Berkeley Bee Agreed. I guess having "Once Upon a Time" in the name of the film wasn't enough for some folks.
6
@Berkeley Bee Exactly. They did another movie with Hilary Duff where Sharon was depicted as leading the charge to save their lives. As if an 8 1/2 pregnant woman is going to be able to do that. Robie captured Sharon perfectly.
3
Sounds revolting. I'm glad I decided to skip it. I don't find Tarantino's obligatory gore and violence entertaining, much less amusing.
20
This is a long film redeemed with a classic "feel good" ending....Go team!
But for those of us who lived through those headlines so long ago, it evokes some deeply uncomfortable moments to include fleeting images of Sharon Tate and whispers of Manson. Closing moments of last year of the 60's.... not the best.
4
I thought the movie was amazing. At the start, it was all atmosphere. I wondered, what do Rick and Cliff have to do with the Tate-LaBianca murders? As an Xer I was familiar with the gruesome Manson crimes because of my forced 1980s teenage immersion into all things Boomer (the dominance of 60s nostalgia 20 years afterwards is something that 80s nostalgia films and shows of recent years have failed to capture— perhaps too meta?). However, the early pace of the film was so languid that I couldn’t believe Tarantino would ever get to the explosive ending he needed to depict the murders. Well, he did get to the explosive ending and the killings he depicted while gruesome were satisfying. My apologies if I fail to feel sympathy for the fate visited upon characters who are based on real life murderers who, lest we forget, were trying to pass their butchery off as the work of black radicals to start a race war.
53
@Carlos H Good points Carlos. I don't understand those who were disturbed at MANSON FAMILY MEMBERS getting brutally killed. These were horrible, horrible people. Violent, nihilistic opportunists - that's all they were. I was happy to see them killed and to see Sharon Tate live.
9
@Carlos H How I wish Jay Sebring or Wojciech Frykowski had had a flame thrower or a badass dog to destroy the Manson minions.
10
I can't help feeling justified once again in my decisions never to see a single Tarantino film. I hate baroque film violence and his is some of the worst. Of course it's a box office success in our violence worshiping country, but now thanks.
32
@Rebecca Hogan I like that you stick to your guns and refuse to see these movies. I hate it when people go to see his movies because they are the most visually gorgeous and tightly crafted films currently made, and then complain about the violence.
6
@Ethan
Au contraire. PTA is the film maker you're thinking of. Tarantino is just a misogynist hipster with a head for snappy dialogue and nostalgic cliches wrapped in esoteric and empty film references
5
I don’t like the ending at all. While I think the revisionist history ending worked in Inglorious Bastards I don’t think it works in Once Upon a Time....in Hollywood. I did not want to see the brutal murders of Sharon Tate and the 4 others killed that night, however to have the killers go to a different house & be killed in outlandish ways felt sophomoric to me. Tarantino has done revisionist history before & now we get it once again with his usual over the top violence played for laughs.
I would have preferred an ending that dealt with the Tate murders offscreen & then tried to provide commentary on what these murders meant in the grand scheme of a changing culture in Hollywood & the U.S. Instead we get an ending to me that shirks the difficult issues for what I think is the easy way out & a few cheap laughs. I think the ending is lacking creatively & intellectually. Tarantino’s movies are must see events, however I will always believe his greatest weakness is his over reliance on absurd violence & inability to deal with the impact of violence & suffering in a mature, non-ironic manner.
19
@Scott As to offscreen murders and the commentary on the culture, you know that you can make a film that does just that, Scott ...
6
@Scott it was supposed to be a comedy. Why does everything have to have "commentary" on what it meant to a changing Hollywood? The ending - having the tables turned on the would-be murderers - was brilliant. Tarantino's "over reliance on absurd violence etc" is what makes Tarantino so great. He doesn't give a hoot about making a movie with a message. He makes movies the way he wants, which is sorely lacking in Hollywood these days. I'd much rather watch a Tarantino original than any of the other drek coming out of Hollywood today. People pay money want to be entertained, not educated.
12
@Court Clerk — a COMEDY? With “gruesome”, “outlandish” violence? Well, ha ha ha, but I’ll skip it.
What the director has accomplished here is devastating.
Every individual watching this film has their own context.
When it was clear he could not possibly be about to let
what actually happened in real life happen, I felt a deep
anguish for the people who were really brutally murdered.
He sets us up for this; we know what is going to happen from
the start, but when it is clear it is not going to happen that way in his film, our imaginations are allowed to think: what if?
But, it is too ingrained in our collective consciousness, we know it happened and watching a fairy tale where it goes another way makes the actual reality of it horrible to remember. It is the opposite of an escape; it is in our faces, in our minds - twisting our expectations around and around so the reality of the crime is felt more than it ever was before.
I hope this doesn't come off too esoteric. I think this film is brilliant. Not perfect. Mr. Tarantino is our own idiot savant.
His place on the spectrum of film auteurs could be compared and contrasted with Spike Lee, in that they both have so much to say and have developed their own particular styles, but display an arrested development that prevents them from
elevating their work to a form that merits works of literature.
So what. It is our luck that they are making films. Showing us, us. Both brilliant. Both juvenile. Both American. Both our very own. Here's to not growing up, here's to telling it
like we see it. Punk up, baby.
73
@Mr. Stick Thank you for this. I was overcome with complicated emotions by the ending, and ended up shaking and sobbing in the car, unable to stop, and having a terrible time articulating why. You just did it for me. I had no idea what the ending was going to be, having carefully avoided anything that hinted at it, and I know (too much) about what happened in that house on that night. When Jay, then Sharon, then Abigail came out of the house, alive and well, I fell apart. If only, indeed, and then, No. What happened, happened, and it is unbearable.
27
I am not normally a fan of Tarantino’s films, but I absolutely loved this one. It was a pleasure throughout, from the well aged Pitt and DiCaprio, the scenes from Sharon Tate’s last film to even the vintage 1960s cars, a treat for the eyes and ears. I loved how the film ended, and like my other favorite film of the summer, Yesterday, in an alternative world that I wish could have been. (Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski’s son would have been the same age as my brother). In such a dismal present day, it is a relief to have films that provide an escape.
61
@Amy Raffensperger, I really like what you've written here. Tarantino is an entertainer. It's his job. And his version is to provide healing, if you will, through entertainment. It's a big deal. So much so, and I learned it early on, I choose to work in movie industry. It's as really as anything else in this world.
6
Tarantino's violence is always so over-the-top that I think of it as comic-book fare. And because of that, it doesn't upset me. (A character in the movie even references the stylized fight scenes in the Batman TV series.)
But I think in this Tarantino film especially, because we all know the gory nature of the Tate-LaBianca murders, it's hard to object to the way these Manson family members meet their ends. It feels like just desserts -- with an excessive, typically-Tarantino cherry on top.
87
I just saw the best film of the year. Loved it!!
48
This was a good movie. I loved the cinematic revenge on
Mason's gang.
17
Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt both shine as two great friends in a beautifully filmed look back to 1969 Hollywood. Both Leo and Brad are great. The film is very funny and has an amazing ending that is typically Tarentino. It is the ending we all wish would have happened, instead of the horror of what actually did. This could be Tarentino's greatest film. I loved it.
132
I loved it! And I love Tarantino's bold, hysterical (funny and unrestrained) revenge imagination. These endings annihilate the heinous events that actually occurred with appropriate force and violence--they are worthy of those actual acts. However, the reviewers miss how cleverly Tarantino plays with the lone pure cowboy hero myth--it's the stunt man--the actor cowboy's double who is the true cowboy hero, who possesses the pure morality of the mythical loner cowboy hero--the loner, bonded only with his horse (here dog), the man of action, he rejects sex (here with a seductive minor), braves danger in loyalty to friends (here George on the Manson farm), and always puts his loyalty to his buddy-boss ahead of his own well-being.
212
@Citizen NYC. Spot on!
15
While Leo and Brad were outstanding, breakout performers were the Butters child actor (since she abhors actress) and Brandy the pit bull. Both actors knocked the ball so far over the Green Wall at Fenway that it landed on a passing Green Line train.
105
I had no intention of seeing the movie so had no problem with the spoilers. Other than his first movie, Tarantino has been nothing but a disappointment. His ultra-violent language has become banal and predictable. My own personal problem with his vigorous and superfluous use of the N-word aside . . . His "homages" to the golden era of American film are derivative at best. His appropriation of the 70's film language is just straight up theft, bereft of any real imagination. While I will give him credit for having a voice, as muted and imitative as it is, his thirst for brutality cannot veil his feeble narratives. As to his obsession with revisionist\fantasy endings concerning moments in history . . . I don't get it. Why¿ Is this his "auterism”. This theme of alternate reality was covered in the Marvel Universe. Boring!
14
@Amigo Sanchez: I have never liked his
films,but the obscenely
offensive ending of
"Inglorious Basterds"
was the end for me.
to turn the holocaust
into a comic book
outburst of violence
is flatly grotesque. as
for his most recent
bloody assault on
history, I will pass.
12
@Amigo Sanchez No idea how old you are, but having been 12 in 1969 and a TV/pop culture addict, I have never seen anything as evocative of the times - almost more so than the very snippets FROM the time he incorporates into the film. Sheer genius - anything but derivative.
18
@Avi Black
I was 13. The Deuce is one of my favorite shows because it takes me back to those times.
Whatever faults he may have Tarantino will show that same fidelity and attention to detail.
He's building a time machine and I will enthusiastically climb aboard!
7
It was sweet to imagine Sharon Tate and her friends living to a happy old age, but I can't help also think that the ending was insensitive to the families of those who were murdered, including Roman Polanski.
9
@Paul McBride, I was heartened to learn that Debra Tate (Sharon Tate's sister, who is still close to Roman Polanski and is a tireless advocate against parole for Manson Family members, loved the film and consulted on it: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2019/07/once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-margot-robbie-sharon-tate
36
I found the movie's ending unexpectedly poignant, and the film now ranks with "Jackie Brown" as one of my favorites of his. Looking back, I see the title cues us to Tarantino's transforming this tragedy into a Hollywood happy-ending fairy tale, while at the same time referencing the spaghetti Westerns genre where Rick finds work ("Once Upon a Time in America"). And the use of the Mamas and the Papas song "Young Girls Are Coming to the Canyon" just as the Manson car approaches, BRILLIANT!
100
Jackie Brown was a GOOD movie.
3
I generally dislike Tarantino’s films and found the ending of the Hitler film to be ridiculous and offensive. I really liked the ending of this new movie though. It was brutal and absurd and I have to say it was very funny. And the meeting of DiCaprio’s character with his neighbors afterwards was sweet and sad. I am old enough to remember the Manson murders. This spin on it to me worked surprisingly well. It does not erase the horror of the original event but manages the horror in an effective way.
Overall, the movie was too long and meandering. Very fine performances. And a great ending.
38
It was a fable for the Hollywood of Tarantino's childhood, which died, or at the very least changed significantly, after the Tate murders. Paying tribute to that Hollywood of the 50's & 60's is the point of most of the movie and keeping Tate relatively obscure through the course of the story represents how she probably would have ended up had she lived. They didn't even recognize her at the theater where her movie was playing. The end is fantasy wish fulfilment and a bit of revenge on those who damaged the dream that Hollywood was before the murders. I thought it played perfectly.
43
@Howard G I doubt Tarantino was aware of the Manson murders as a child, he was about 6 years old. I was 14 at the time and as a news junkie I watched it unfold in the courts on tv. It didn’t color my childhood, there were plenty of other horrible things going on at the time like the Vietnam war, which in a few years I would have been personally affected by, except fortunately the draft ended.
4
@Paulie I was seven years old in Los Angeles at the time of the murders, and I assure you, he had an awareness of them.
6
@Paulie Tarantino & I are the same age, so we were 6 in 1969. I was aware of the murders. I may not have known much, but I knew there was a psycho named Manson & I knew that some "bad" people murdered a pregnant actress & some of her friends. As I got older, I learned the full extent of Manson's mayhem. I'm sure it was the same with Tarantino.
6
I can’t agree that it ends in a way you may not expect. I suspected that it would end in this vein, based on a couple of Tarantino’s previous movies, but hoped it wouldn’t. I liked the film well enough — it meanders enjoyably while the inevitable factual event hangs darkly over the story.
But “Hey, wouldn’t it be great if — ?” It would have been great if Oswald missed and JFK pulled a hidden rocket launcher out and blew Oswald to pieces.
I’m surprised that anyone would find this “let’s pretend” finale a satisfying artistic choice.
15
@Michael Fallon If it really did happen that the Manson family went one door over, and killed some group of nobodies then the news would have never left LA. The world might be a different place. a tiny twist of fate that could very easily have happened if the wind blew a different way that day. Maybe that is the message.
2
Many of Tarantino's films are suffused with notion of either an individual and/or a societal revenge fantasy.
"What should have been", in Tarantino's imagination. This is part of that continuum.
I thought it was crazy and funny and over-the-top, and, perfect.
106
I think the well-meaning, high-level intent was to create a world where Manson lives in deserved obscurity and Tate gets to live her life; a self conscious, fairy tale Hollywood world. The audience I was with, and me, saw Pitt's performance at the end as comic. The violence was mostly on the gruesome soundtrack with some quick, bloody shots mixed in. Hey, they were home invaders and got what they deserved. Not disturbing at all. QT delivered the catharsis he was attempting.
139
@NewEnglander56 100% agree.
14
@Howard G Likewise!
13
@NewEnglander56 Totally agree. Read my comment above. Couldn't agree more.
6
I'm not quite old enough to have been aware of the Manson murders at the time, but am familiar with the incident on a vague level. Thus when I saw the movie I regretted not doing a little homework so I'd know all the relevant names & exactly what happened. I'm sure it would've been a little more meaningful if I had, & will be for those old enough to know the history. So I recommend anyone under 60 do a little research 1st.
About the revisionist ending, I recognized it was similar to "Inglourious Basterds." I'm not sure what the purpose of either fantasy ending is other than giving us a make-believe "if only..." that would have avoided atrocities, but doing so in a way that's so over the top it acknowledges this is pure wish-fulfillment. A Hollywood happy ending on history, rather than of an adaptation of a novel or play with a tragic ending.
Regardless, I found the ultra-violence disturbing (which is a problem I've always had with Tarantino's films), all the more so b/c the worst of it is against the 2 women Manson followers. I didn't find it funny in the least.
And it relates to the ambivalence of Brad Pitt's character who is rumored to have killed his wife & gotten away with it. The flashback of just before he evidently killed her creates ambiguity as to whether it was intentional or accidental. Still, a man who killed his wife is 1 of 2 heroes of the story.
Whether Tarantino is criticizing the hyper-masculinity of Hollywood or just reflecting it is open to debate.
11
@JediProf
As to the 'revisionist' ending, there's a clear trend here, and I think the always insightful Anthony Lane nailed it in his review for the New Yorker:
"What became clear, from Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” (2009) and “Django Unchained” (2012), is that he’s no longer content with the revival of trivia, forging a style from the scraps of a consuming culture. History is also there for the tweaking. So, in the first of those tales, Hitler is slain before the end of the war; in the second, a former slave destroys a plantation. (In both cases, fire is the purifier, and it flares again in the new film.) While many audiences revelled in the havoc, some of us flinched at its implications. I felt I was being inducted into the revenge fantasies of a blazingly gifted adolescent, or of an even younger boy, galvanizing the playground with shouts of “Let’s kill Nazis!” In short, Tarantino is the ideal creative figurehead for an era in which the old-school need to explore previous eras, or to argue over them, is being trumped, with the aid of technology, by the more exhilarating urge to remake them as we desire."
10
@Sam
"I felt I was being inducted into the revenge fantasies of a blazingly gifted adolescent, or of an even younger boy, galvanizing the playground with shouts of 'Let’s kill Nazis!'"
This perfectly sums up my feeling about all of Tarantino's films. Middle-school fantasies.
28
@JediProf Having seen the movie twice, I think the ending is meant to be disturbing (moreso the second time because of watching the action more closely) but also amusing. You can't believe your eyes! One has to remember that Cliff is suffering from an unexpected experience, an LSD trip where reality is distorted as he is fighting the invaders. He knows these people are dangerous and and his overreaction is powered by that and the LSD. And those of us who are old enough to not only remember the killings but also the western TV shows of the fifties (and the other historical and movie references) can appreciate the humor and truthfulness of the actor whose time has passed.
14
I loved it.
21