Review // The Hateful Eight

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Despite the fact that his films are filled to the brim with brutal violence and morally bankrupt characters, the good guys almost always win in Tarantino movies. Whether it’s Sam Jackson’s reformed criminal Jules in Pulp Fiction, Pam Grier’s  double-crossing flight attendant Jackie Brown, Brad Pitt and his renegade group of Nazi-killers in Inglorious Basterds or Jamie Foxx’s freeman Django in Django Unchained, the person you’re rooting for normally comes out on top. Sure these characters do their share of crime and killing, but they’re still the most morally upstanding of a bad lot. That’s what makes The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino’s eighth film and second western, all the more disturbing. All of the characters are bad, and it’s nearly impossible to tell who will come out on top by the end of it’s near-three hour runtime.

The film begins with a stagecoach on a snowy mountain road. John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is taking Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to be hung in the nearby town of Red Rock. On their way they are stopped by two travellers, the bounty-hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Chris Mannix (Walter Goggins) the new sheriff of Red Rock. All three men are familiar to each other through one circumstance or another, having been involved in events of the Civil War on both sides. With a blizzard closing in on them, the stagecoach driver O.B. (James Parks) suggests they make a run for Minnie’s Haberdashery and wait out the storm. When the five travellers arrive at the well-stocked cabin Minnie is nowhere to be found. Instead, four men await them: the hangman of Red Rock Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), former Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), the cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and a fur-coated Mexican named Bob (Demian Bichir). Who are these men, and how did they all end up at this small cabin in the mountains?

Like many of Tarantino’s films The Hateful Eight is an exercise in suspense and misdirection. It’s as if the director looked at the most memorable scenes of his last two movies (the opening farmhouse scene in Inglorious Basterds, the dinner table scene in Django Unchained) and said to himself “I should stretch that into an entire movie”. However unlike those scenes the audience isn’t in on the twist. Instead, we’re fed long and detailed stories by each of the characters, all while knowing at least one of them must be lying. Sam Jackson’s Warren is our substitute, quickly sussing out that there is something wrong in this cabin, but just as helpless as us in finding out what it is. In this way, The Hateful Eight feels more akin to Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs than his more modern efforts. Like that film, he intentionally keeps the audience and characters in the dark, right up until the predictably bloody finale.

And it’s quite the finale. In fact it might be Tarantino’s most brutal display of violence yet. Not because there are more exploding squibs or shattered bones, but because the whole thing feels doomed from the get-go. We have no good guy. Sure we have characters we like more than others. It’s a thrill to see Kurt Russell snowed-in again, especially while he’s doing his best John Wayne, Samuel L. Jackson tears up the Tarantino dialogue like only he can, Jennifer Jason Leigh is ridiculous fun as the spitting, snarling Domergue, and Walter Goggins gives a stand out performance as the dopey Sheriff Mannix. But in the end you’re left feeling…well a little flat. The film’s first half spends so much time building histories for it’s characters, only to largely abandon these as unimportant in the second half. It’s as if the director took the set up for an Agatha Christie novel, injected it with brutal violence, then told you the mystery was unimportant.

Nevertheless The Hateful Eight is a heck of a wild ride. I was lucky enough to see the film in it’s 70mm roadshow print, and the experience of watching the light flicker across that wide screen is captivating. It feels like being at the drive-in without a car. It might seem strange that Tarantino chose to shoot the film in 70mm and then set it largely indoors, however the way the cast of characters move through the generously furnished cabin is a treat for the eyes (and a lesson in subtle, yet captivating mise-en-scene). It truly is a cinema event. The screen, the dialogue, the cast, they’re all big, and certainly worth experiencing if you can. But in the end, amidst all of this largess, you’re left with a lingering doubt, like a mysterious imposter, asking you what it’s all for. That’s a familiar feeling for a lot of movies, but an unfamiliar feeling for a Tarantino.

Reviewed by Evan Arppe.