The Hateful Eight

In Quentin Tarantino’s 2015 movie, eight travelers with joyfully massive personalities sit out a blizzard together at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach rest stop in post-Civil War Wyoming. The group includes two bounty hunters (Samuel L. Jackson and Kurt Russell), a prisoner (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a sheriff (Walton Goggins), an English hangman (Tim Roth), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), an ex-Confederate general (Bruce Dern) and Bob the Mexican (Demián Bichir). The performances are strong all around – it’s all a dialogue driven, theatrical enjoyment – but it’s Goggins, as the racist goon Chirs Mannix, who is the highlight.

The basic story is John Ruth (Russell) is transporting Daisy Domergue (Leigh), a criminal with a $10,000 bounty with her, to the beams in the town of Red Rock. He has a hunch over one or more of the strange characters at the cabin of either being in cahoots with Daisy and wanting to free her or wanting to steal her and claim the reward themselves. Louis Lalire said in his review, “What follows is classic Tarantino: slow-burning, tense dialogue in a claustrophobic setting, intermittently diffused by humor—until it isn’t and explodes in a hail of bullets.”

“The Hateful Eight” is called “The Eighth Film From Quentin Tarantino,” and it looks to work under the thought its audience already knows the director’s elements. What makes the first half of the film so suspenseful is the inevitability of the second, where blood – lots of blood – will be seen. Lalire said, “It plays out as a murder mystery for a violent act we’ve yet to witness. The audience gets its kicks from trying to guess which of the suspicious stagecoach passengers will instigate Tarantino’s patented style of bloodshed—and how, and when.”

Sadly, the “when” proves paralyzing to the film’s final act. Once the violent eventually shows itself, it unleashes all the high tension long before the film’s end. Tarantino plays out too soon yet thinks the audience will remain entertained. Lalire mentioned, “We’re left with a gory but dawdling final act further hindered by an expository, unnecessarily violent flashback that spends far too much time revealing what we already suspect. Tarantino always seems to mistake body counts for provocative payoffs.”

You think if he’ll ever really trick the audience and stop showing bloodshed altogether. Eight films in Tarantino remains unwilling to disrupt his own style in that manner. He once again displays his expertise for creating strong suspense and combining it with humor, but the only way “The Hateful Eight” could have really amazed is if no one ended up shooting a bullet.

This is another movie that I ended up seeing on Netflix, but it was split up into a four-part miniseries. I don’t know if that was any different from the theatrical version, but I still enjoyed the movie. If anyone is a Tarantino fan, they should see this movie. You will like how everything plays out and it is definitely worth seeing. If it makes you uncomfortable, I won’t be surprised. Still, check it out because you will love it.

Now we have concluded “Western Month.” I hope all of you enjoyed it and stay tuned next month to see what I will review next.