Minor spoilers below, but I will do my best not to blow any unnecessary details
When it comes to extreme violence, I'm cool with pretty much anything. But I expect a movie to use violence in a way that makes sense for the story. Nothing in this film's first two hours leads us to expect the sadistic brutality of its climax. Certainly nothing in its trailers or marketing does. I've heard some comments along the lines of "It's Tarantino, what do you expect?", and it's true that he's notorious for slow-burn builds of tension released with a cathartic outburst of gore. But "Hollywood" doesn't do this. The first two hours are largely an easy-going lark, with occasional suspense that's mostly relieved by comedy. For the last 15 minutes to erupt in violence so skin-crawling that it made even me want to run raises the artistic stakes and puts some heavy demands on the director to make it worth doing. This, he does not do.
It almost feels like this climax is meant to distract the audience from the screenplay's lack of satisfying dramatic arcs. The one that mostly works is Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio), who comes to terms with his career being on the downswing, and decides to stop moping and make the best of it. But Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie) remains an enigma (more on her later), and Cliff (Pitt) plays a likable heroic bad-ass that pretty much doesn't evolve at all. By the end of the film his relationship with Jack is in crisis, but it's never really dealt with except to say that a huge violent climax just kind of makes everything fine I guess. Far more troublesome, however, is the matter of his wife.
"Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" doesn't seem to know what to do with its women. They are without exception either fetish objects, shrewish nags, or brainwashed psychopaths. When violence does erupt, the truly horrifying stuff only happens to female characters. And too many elements of the story feel like Tarantino excusing his own real-life issues with abusive treatment of female actors in his productions. For instance, at one point Jack "ad-libs" the choice to throw his eight year old girl co-star roughly onto the ground during a performance. When he starts to apologize she says it's fine because she always wears arm pads and practices throwing herself on the ground all the time as if she expects this to happen at any time. And it was all worth it because it allowed Jack to give the best performance he was capable of. So that's... eyebrow raising. Let's move on.
Eventually, Cliff is revealed to have quite likely killed his wife and gotten away with it, which is why nobody but Jack will hire him anymore. A flashback seems to say "maybe he did, maybe he didn't, but she sure was a nag, right fellas?". The murder is depicted merely as a regretful impediment to Cliff's career, and the only people in the film who have a problem with it are women, who I guess should get over their production-delaying feelings, stop complaining and let the psychopath endanger them. The fact that by the end of the film this is never dealt with, and that Cliff never bothers to defend himself or even comment on the incident is just plain creepy.
Then of course there's Sharon Tate, and while Robbie's scenes are great fun to watch, in the end all we learn about Tate is that she's an adorable aspiring actress and that Tarantino has a fetish for lanky blondes and ogling their conspicuously dirty bare feet. Perhaps we're meant to like and fetishize Tate to the same degree he does, and feel scared and/or sad that her innocent star is likely to be snuffed out by the Manson Family.
Tarantino expects us to come in knowing all about the Tate murders, which is honestly a lot to ask nowadays. Many people my age and younger only know about it if we're inclined to look up creepy true-crime murder stories, and I've already had to explain to many people that Sharon Tate was a real person, or why Spahn Ranch should creep you out. The movie definitely relies on this history to do its heavy lifting, and we never actually see Charlie or his Family do anything except be really creepy and cult-like before their pivotal role in the climax. If you do know anything about what went down, Tarantino's revisionism is implausible and short-sighted at best. And I'm not inclined to be that charitable.
The main reason that the real life-murders were so traumatizing to the nation was how pointless and brutal they were. To have innocent people killed in such a disturbing fashion shattered our innocence. I'm not sure how Tarantino could have dealt with this material in any kind of positive way, to be honest. But I can assure you that subjecting the audience to alternate, equally horrifying violence that's okay because it happens to people we aren't supposed to like is not that way. And I found it impossible to respond to this re-imagined violence except with revulsion and horror. To expect an audience to respond otherwise shows a shocking lack of empathy.
I couldn't laugh. I just wanted the screaming to stop. And the fact that some in the audience were whooping and cheering the whole time filled me with despair. Tarantino needs to realize that not every film has to end with blood, guts and horror. "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" seemed like a film that was going to break away from his worst habits, but in the end it doubles down on the worst one of all.
Image credit: By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=60263751
