Review: The Hateful Eight

Cinema: The Hateful Eight (2015)

Bounty Hunter John Ruth (AKA: ‘The Hangman’ and played by Kurt Russell) heads for Red Rock with his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) through a snow clad and frozen Wyoming. On the way they come across another bounty Hunter; Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), and the new sheriff of Red Rock; Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) who hitch a ride in the wagon to escape an icy death. Racing ahead of a blizzard they stop at Minnie’s haberdashery, where they must remain holed up with other travellers Bob, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), OB Jackson and General Smithers (Bruce Dern).

Do you remember when Woody Allen was funny? Then he got all serious and people longed for funny Woody again. Quentin Tarrantino has that effect on me. When he first started with the script for True Romance, and writing/directing Reservoir Dogs, then Pulp Fiction where he literally could do no wrong, his snappy dialogue, multi-layered storytelling and visuals were something new and bright and good, and here’s where he started to slip a little for me. Jackie Brown and the 2 Kill Bill’s were both works of genius but that once snappy dialogue was becoming a little too ‘trademark Tarrantino’ and the ‘in’ jokes began to wear a bit thin. By the time I saw Death Proof I was pretty bored. To this day I genuinely think Death Proof is a mess, and a boring one at that. Inglorious Basterds didn’t ignite any passion in me, with the exception of Christoph Waltz’s turn as a charming and thoroughly evil Nazi. Even Leonardo DiCaprio’s method acting bleeding fingers couldn’t turn me on to Django Unchained (Hummm there’s only one Django for me and that’s Mr Nero). So as you can see, I fell out of love with Quentin, he’d become to self-reverential, too ‘knowing wink at the audience’, too ‘up his own arse’ in the sense that he believed in his own hype and that all those many words were still snappy and not jaded in the least.

So, Tarrantino’s new film, and on seeing the trailer I did think ‘Oohhhh’… and hoped that perhaps this would be an epic film. First off, the real star of this film is everything onscreen. Filmed in an all but defunct 70mm this truly is a thing of beauty, from the snowy vistas to the facial close ups, 70mm is the stuff of epics like Ben-Hur and Lawrence of Arabia. It gives such depth and scope to a picture that despite its breadth, being able to see the whole room gives one a sense of real intimacy and sometimes claustrophobia. Seeing this film in IMAX would be a visual treat and I applaud Tarrantino’s vision of filming in 70mm, it’s a real shame that film isn’t being shown country-wide in the way it was meant to be seen. ‘

I don’t know if this is the version of the script that was leaked online before filming began, but here we have a pretty straightforward story. It’s basically a whodunit, the ‘who’ being: are all the people gathered in Minnie’s haberdashery who they say they are? Being all stuck together (or in Daisy and Ruth’s case, chained together) only time will tell.  The acting is good, stand out’s being Jason Leigh, Goggin’s (a starring role at last!) and a career best from Jackson, who channelling Miss Marple works out the conundrum of who is bad, and who is good.

Much has been said about the misogynism in the film. When we first see Daisy she has a (comedy) black eye, this is soon joined by a bloody nose after an elbow in the face, missing teeth after being repeatedly punched, she’s knocked unconscious twice (once by Jackson, once by Russell) and has hot food thrown in her face, and her reaction? She laughs. Even with her teeth knocked out, she laughs. Is Tarrantino deliberately trying to be controversial? Perhaps, but then what other film maker can constantly use the racial slur of ‘Nigger’ and get away with it? We EXPECT it from Tarrantino, from anyone else it would be deemed unnecessary and racist, but from him it’s just part of the ‘snappy dialogue’. The N word soon turns into the constant use of the word ‘Bitch’ and both are used in a derogatory way. But for some reason it’s acceptable from Tarrantino. One could say that in the 1850s in the ‘Wild West’ those 2 words would be common place, and of course that’s absolutely right. Also Daisy’s frequent bashings seem to be filmed in a comedic manner, despite them being rather graphic. I do feel Tarrantino HAS gone for shock value though, as using racist language is a no-no, depicting the jolly beating of women is totally unheard of.

Like a few of his other films the sense of racism against black people comes to the fore with Jackman’s interaction with all the other character’s and the use of his ‘letter from Abraham Lincoln’, and it’s a thread that runs through the whole film culminating in a standoff with Confederate Bruce Dern where Jackson describes his meeting with Dern’s son. No spoilers, but again we find Tarrantino going for those old shock tactics. Sigh.

By now I had begun to want things to start winding up. Although watchable, all the clever dialogue and heads exploding begin to wear thin, as in essence, the story is basically an Agatha Christie set in the Wild West with a sprinkling of racial awareness and women who are as tough as men. Yeehaw.

Several reviews of this film have likened it to John Carpenter’s The Thing and it’s easy to see the comparisons; a group of men, isolated, paranoid, so does that make Daisy ‘The Thing’ itself? Hummm. Sorry chaps, to me The Thing may not look as good as The Hateful Eight but the story is a LOT better.

At 187 minutes it is WAY too long. However, the first hour is very entertaining and slips slowly downhill from there. Also during the beginning credits an actor’s name pops up, and I spent nearly the whole film wondering where they were…which brings us back to Agatha Christie done Tarrantino style. I’d like to see someone ELSE direct a Tarrantino script, perhaps another director could reign in all that ‘knowing’ dialogue and cut and hour off the running time and make a movie that would make Quentin grow a little, or rather, shrink. A beautiful film to gaze upon, fine acting, ropey story and an hour too long.

Review by Tina (co-host of 60 Minutes With)