Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

BEAUTIFUL AND BRUTAL - 8/10

by Mohamad Khatib

First let me get this out of the way, a Tarantino movie does not necessarily mean an action or a thriller... a Tarantino movie is a Tarantino movie and this is a beautiful one that flows smoothly like a breeze.. Quentin creates a colorful Hollywood apparent in all the street signs, cinema theatres, restos, etc... colors do change a bit when we are introduced to the worlds of DiCaprio's Rick Dalton and Pitt's Cliff Booth and Robbie's Tate, quite evident in their costumes and surroundings, Rick and Cliff dress up mostly in yellows and browns while Sharon enjoys all sorts of flashy colors, which i think reflects both of their mood and psyche so to speak, with Rick struggling in his career and the laid-back Dalton just tagging along for the ride while Sharon is mostly jolly dolly with her lifestyle. DiCaprio and Pitt enjoy such an amazing chemistry, due to their acting prowesses and certainly due to their characters being so opposite to another, Rick being the extrovert in his emotional bursts and insecurities while Cliff is more introvert, does not talk as much, you can sense everything going around him in his body language, he is a man with a dark history and past mistakes, a rough and tough character indeed. I think all the surrounding supporting roles including Bruce Lee's where written in a way just to serve a purpose in fleshing out Rick's and Cliff's stories, all were rather 1 dimensional, appearing in a few scenes or just one. Hats off to Tarantino for in his ballsy attempt to create a fiction within a nonfiction or vice versa, a move as far i know has not been done before and to always succeed in making simple narratives interesting, visually and content wise, along with his usual misleading tension and suspense trademark which i absolutely love, Tarantino always finds means to manipulate your thinking and the scene set up themselves, 3 and 4 steps ahead of the audience, nothing ever happens in scenes you are sure something will or something else happens entirely. Speaking of trademarks, we get the parallel events, flashback expositions, and the on-point music and dialogue audio editing with the beginning and ending of some scenes, and all are so interesting and enjoyable to watch. All in all this story is a more character-driven one, a ride along with Rick and Cliff in their lives while interesecting with other surrounding events and worlds and finally clashing in the final 20 most brutal minutes of this movie that to that moment did not see coming and i enjoyed every funny and bloody (pun intended) moment of it.

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