@nodima said:
I love Tarantino and I'd probably rank this as his worst movie. I'm going to see it a second time on $5 Tuesday to confirm but outside of a couple select scenes (including the ending, which - I'd say predictably - played all the same notes as Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained and still worked 100%) it was just a disengaging slog. It was one of those movies where I like everything about it except that it doesn't feel like it's going anywhere, to the point it's a nearly 3 hour movie yet I was surprised when it was over, like there was more movie on the horizon.
This was the closest a Tarantino movie has come to actually unlikable for me, so I'm very curious to see it a second time since, despite the fun of being surprised by his scripts is a lot of the draw to his films' theatrical releases, what's enduring about his movies are just how enjoyable they are when you know what's coming. His filmography is one of the most rewatchable ever IMO, so I'm crossing my fingers some of the layers of this movie peel back on second showing.
I completely disagree with this take after my second viewing, and realize I'd had maybe a bit too much to drink the first night I saw it. When the movie started jumping around in time I had just really lost track of it, and there were large blank spots in my memory during the middle third that really put the movie in better perspective for me. Really, I thought the whole thing was kind of magical that second time, and I basically feel the complete opposite about it as I did the first time. It's just a wonder to watch and take in, especially at a time when this kind of money just doesn't get spent on movies this personal, everything is either genre or art house. Alongside Inglorious Basterds this is a truly timeless movie that feels like it could have been made at any point in movie history, but could've only been made by the person who made it.
I might go see it a third time before it's out of theaters; the last movie I wanted to see three times in a theater was Phantom Thread.
Also, I don't think people who see the Bruce Lee portrayal as negative, or even honest, are really paying attention to the movie or the director's actual feelings on the subject. He loves Bruce Lee and martial arts cinema in general, but does Cliff Burton? The character is never presented as a reliable narrator, and it's made abundantly clear that if Leo's character is fearful for his future, Cliff is resigned to his insignificance. In that light, us seeing that moment through Cliff's lens to me reads as a fantasy to the point it may not even be how that fight "actually" occurred, accepting that Cliff is not a real person and Bruce is and that this whole movie is a revenge fantasy for a crime that, in its universe, doesn't actually happen anyway.
Contrast the Bruce portrayed in Cliff's memory of him with the Bruce we see "in the real world" playfully training Sharon and generally being just a cool karate dude and I think you get a clearer picture as well. If you walk away from that scene thinking "there's no way Cliff Booth beats Bruce Lee in a street fight" (which, by the way, he also didn't do, even if the car moment is the wow moment of the scene) I'd argue it's entirely possible that Bruce Lee kicked his ass in the "actual" fight depending on how much you choose to believe what we see on the screen versus what we know about those two characters.
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