Tarantino: Once Upon a Time in Hollywood

[Rain Man]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

Pitts Cliff Booth made the movie for me. I found the Rick Dalton stuff kinda boring.

But every scene involving Cliff was magic.

In an odd coincidence, I just watched the movie last night for the first time. I'd wanted to see it in the theaters but never had the timing right to do it.

I agree on Cliff versus Rick. If you completely took Rick out of the movie it wouldn't have made a negative impact. Cliff was the interesting one. In fact, the movie was coming close to losing me during that big extended filming scene in the middle where Rick was on the set of the western.

I also don't get Tarantino's love of ridiculous violence like the flame thrower use. I don't think it added anything and it took me out of scene because it was so unrealistic. I'll admit that I did laugh at Cliff slamming that one woman's face against every single thing in the house, though.

I'll comment on the ending in a spoiler in case someone hasn't seen it.

Spoiler!

I wasn't sure how it was going to end, and I was thinking it was going to be a downer to watch Sharon Tate get killed right at the end. But I really liked the fact that Cliff and Rick ended up nudging the hippies off that course. It made for a happy ending, and saved some people who didn't deserve to die.

It struck me that that was the whole genesis of the movie concept. Tarantino was probably talking to someone and they said, "What if one little thing had gone differently?" So they added that one element as fiction and built the story around it.

It was a decent movie, middle of the pack for Tarantino, but the ending saved it. If the murders had happened I would've walked away unhappy. But with Cliff and his dog saving everybody, suddenly the whole reason for the movie clicked and I walked away with a positive feeling about it.