The night

Life is ordinary in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood: the only action is in the movies, so when action erupts at the conclusion of the film the audience knows they have left reality for a fictional narrative. The big surprise is the moment after that moment when Jay Sebring opens the gates to 10050 Cielo Drive and invites Rick Dalton to join them in the real-life house of death: Maurice Jarre's score from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean plays eerily, the gates open and Rick hesitates before crossing the shaded threshold. As the camera drifts up and away, we see he has joined the victims in a moonlit dream. It's a plangent moment, more La Dolce Vita than Sergio Leone.

There is a western in Quentin Tarantino's latest, and a child actor cowgirl who lectures Rick on political correctness (double burn: she considers Walt Disney the greatest genius of the 20th century), but mostly the movie is about driving, listening to music, hanging out – the boredom of movie-making and aimless killers-to-be. The awkward voice-over is balanced by at least two other scenes in which characters provide redundant narration: a hippie at Spahn ranch watching Cliff Booth through an insect screen, and Cliff watching Rick's TV episode of FBI, a class of meta-reference Brian De Palma, another Italian filmmaker, pulled for Body Double. Hollywood is a gentle European exercise in style and form. Even Al Pacino delivers softly. Tarantino the writer is running on fumes – the dialogue doesn't spark like it used to, and the flashbacks feel like a patch-up – but Tarantino the director is new and good; almost wise.