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There are few, if any, directors who can stir up a storm of anticipation for their latest creation like Quentin Tarantino. His rabid fan base, coupled with his unmatched knack for creating humorous, violent pulp fiction (heh) makes every film release an event rather than an experience.
In The Hateful Eight, all the usual Tarantino staples are present, from the extended, foul-mouthed dialogue sections to the visceral, exaggerated gore, to Samuel L Jackson, to the blacker-than-black humour, to the lower back surgery you’ll need after sitting through a three-hour epic … it’s all here.
While the movie re-treads some very familiar ground and takes some frustrating directions, which prevents it from being a classic, Tarantino provides an eminently watchable hybrid of the Western and mystery genres sprinkled with his trademark gallows humour and wall-to-wall bloodshed.
Largely set inside a wintery Wyoming outpost dubbed Minnie’s Haberdashery, the story finds a pair of bounty hunters, Major Marquis Warren (Jackson) and John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (Russell), crossing paths and ultimately sharing a stagecoach ride.
Ruth is escorting his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Leigh), to the town of Red Rock where she’s to be hanged for murder. Along the way, they also pick up Chris Mannix (Goggins), a former Confederate raider who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.
Snowed in together during a blizzard, four other strangers await them at Minnie’s, namely General Sandy Smithers, a grizzled old Confederate, silent cowboy Joe Gage; Bob, a Mexican ranch hand left in charge of the place while Minnie and her husband are away and Oswaldo Mobray, a British gentleman.
Between the eight of them, dark secrets are harboured and there’s an undercurrent of violent intent. The wounds of the Civil War are still raw, and none of the group, be it for race reasons or what flag they fought under, like, or trust, the others.
The clue is in the film’s title after all, and Ruth is convinced that one or more of the group is plotting to murder him and free his prisoner.
I must admit, Tarantino does an excellent job of balancing the Western and the mystery aspects. The characters are assembled in the room like the denouement of an Agatha Christie Poirot novel, except they spend 90 per cent of the film in there, but the dialogue could have been ripped from any 50s or 60s spaghetti epic. With a lot more swearing, of course.
There is a lot of talking to sit through, almost the entire first half, in fact, but it never feels like padding out the run time and every word drips with importance and the typical Tarantino sharpness.
The set-up is fantastic and the best part of the movie. The underlying theme that permeates the narrative is race relations in America, the story’s post-Civil War setting actually allowing for an exploration of some very contemporary issues.
As the sole African-American character among the lead roles, Jackson’s Marquis Warren is a true no-nonsense warrior whose interactions with the white characters become central to the story even more so than the mystery around who might be coming to Daisy’s aid.
Warren’s a Civil War veteran who carries a letter from Abraham Lincoln and was a legendary scourge to the Confederates (as you can imagine, this goes down a storm with his new friends). He is the Poirot of the piece as he assembles the jigsaw together, but the real tension comes in imagining how the white characters react to this armed and dangerous black man’s investigation.
The film is presented almost as a play as opposed to a movie, with events divided into six chapters and accompanied by an overture and an intermission. It’s a shame then, that after crafting the first two acts in a Shakespearean-esque way, merging the best of his tragedies and comedies into one whole, that the final section is so predictable.
Just as anticipation reaches fever pitch about who the potential murderer might be or who will be the first to die, these questions soon become frustratingly academic. Duh, we should have known … everyone is a murderer in a Tarantino flick. The time for sharp, suspense-building dialogue is over, and the blood-letting and pistol-firing is about to begin.
It sometimes seems like Tarantino parodies himself with every passing movie, like he has a set of criteria that he has to meet otherwise he can’t put his name to it. Why does every story have to resolve in the most excessive, vicious way? In something like Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill, a true tale of vengeance, then, yes, I’d understand, but why here after spending two hours creating an intriguing set-up? What was the point of it all?
Until the conclusion, which is still thrilling and awesome in its execution, just not in its purpose, The Hateful Eight was on its way to being in my list of favourite movies. Outstanding performances, some of the most beautiful wintry cinematography ever filmed and memorable, anecdotal dialogue are sadly spoiled by Tarantino doing his best, well, Tarantino impression.
His fans will lap it up, as will those who just want to see the extreme violence but sometimes, as he seems to forget, substance wins out over style.
