In this video, I pick the skilled brains of a Hollywood stuntman and an an award-winning actor to break down why Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time In Hollywood works so damn well, and on so many levels.

Former FBI Special Agent Tim Clemente is a stunt performer and writer (NCIS-Los Angeles, The Unit, Criminal Minds) who went undercover as a drug smuggler to help take down members of the Cali Cartel. A 2011 Esquire profile by described him as “an excellent terrorist hunter.” In other words, someone Brad Pitt would love to play in a movie.

Matthew Marsden is a British born actor and director (Rambo, The Transformers, Black Hawk Down, Shiner, That Man Is You) with a passion for communicating life through cinematic story.

Both men happen to be practicing Catholics and fathers of large families—which spells a unique a perspective on the social and cultural issues explored in Tarantino’s ninth film.

We cover a wide range of topics and themes in Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, including:

 * Why Hippies as quasi-Nazis represents a massive shift in cultural narrative

* the many allusions to other Tarantino movies but also to LA icons and other movies abound in this movie

* True masculine virtue vs false substitute “masculinities”

* Brad Pitt’s stuntman character Cliff Booth as actual cowboy, driven not by ego or high salary but by what is right

* Leonardo DiCaprio’s Rick Dalton stumbles into a new era of showbiz that cause his insecurities to flare up—but, with Cliff’s paradoxical mentorship, grows far beyond what he thought he had in him

* Why this movie robs the Manson legacy by providing a “What If” premise that highlights the innocent loveliness of real life murder victim Sharon Tate

* Key question: is this movie an indictment of Hollywood penchant for selling depictions of violence—and, indirectly, of the writer director himself?

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