Quentin Tarantino’s storied career has offered a refreshing mixture of classic genre constructs with sharp writing and performances. He is one of the few filmmakers in which every release feels like an event, with his latest Once Upon A Time In Hollywood looking to be perhaps his biggest, and potentially his best, project yet.
With the film set to debut at the Cannes Film Festival this week, Sony has decided to release the first official trailer for the upcoming Charles Manson-era tale. Check out the trailer along with the film’s official synopsis:
Quentin Tarantino’s ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD visits 1969 Los Angeles, where everything is changing, as TV star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his longtime stunt double Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt) make their way around an industry they hardly recognize anymore. The ninth film from the writer-director features a large ensemble cast and multiple storylines in a tribute to the final moments of Hollywood’s golden age.
This trailer does a great job of enticing audiences with different tones and story beats without giving any crucial information away. When this movie was first announced as a Charles Manson film, audiences felt slightly uneasy about the project, but I think these early trailers have revealed a film with a lot more depth and scope.
Charles Manson appears to only be a part of a story that follows the end of the Golden Age of cinema, a time where the industry and society found itself in a state of uneasy transition. If Tarantino can capture the nuances of the era while taping into our modern culture, the final product could be one of his best films.