Movie Review: The Hateful Eight

Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction) brings us his eighth film.....The Hateful Eight.....see what he did there?

A bounty hunter named John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell, Furious 7) is trying to get his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh, Single White Female), in to Red Rock.  While trying to outrun a blizzard to do this, he runs across Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson, Kingsman: The Secret Service) and later, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins, Django Unchained), both of whom are also trying to get to Red Rock.  Ruth let's both men join him in his coach.  Eventually they have to stop and wait out the storm at a place called Minnie's Haberdashery.  Only Minnie isn't there.  Four strangers are there instead, and that's when all hell breaks loose.

The title really sells this movie well.  If you're looking for a good guy to root for, you're probably in the wrong place.  This movie is bad people being awful.  That may sound terrible, but Tarantino wrote the characters so interesting that you still enjoy the ride.  I feel his writing has always been one of his strong suits in a career that's been hit or miss with me.  The first half of this movie is basically character interaction in a wagon, but it works.  Even though most of their dialogue is exposition, you can't help getting sucked in and wanting to know more about them.  The only problem that leads to is when the film hits the halfway point (I'm assuming where you'd find the intermission if you were lucky enough to catch the 70mm screening....which I did not).  After probably an hour and a half of actual character dialogue bringing in the exposition, we all of a sudden get a narrator (the voice of Tarantino himself) popping in for a minute.  Then we get it one more time a little later.  Only having a narrator twice in the middle of a 3 hour movie just felt so jarring and pulled me right out of the film.

The cinematography is another thing to behold in this film.  The movie is essentially broken into two halves.  The first half, while they are out on the trail, is filled with gorgeous wide tracking shots of the snowy terrain.  It really is something to see up on the big screen.  The second half turns into kind of a mystery and takes place almost entirely in the haberdashery.  It's basically a mystery of who's more hateful than who, and who's lying about what, and who's gonna get killed next.  In these close quarters the cinematography turns to more deliberate shots.  It feels like everything in the frame has a purpose.  If you see something in the background it probably has some significance.



The acting is also so much fun.  Yes, Tarantino writes well, but that doesn't mean anything if you can't get the actors to pull it off right.  Kurt Russell and his amazing mustache are great as usual.  Between this and Pulp Fiction, I'd Say Jackson gives some of his best performances in Tarantino films.  Then there is Goggins.  He is absolutely manic as Mannix, and it is a joy to watch.  Bruce Dern also does fine, as well as Tarantino alums Tim Roth and Michael Madsen.  Leigh was great for nearly the whole way through until the end, where her performance went just a little too far over the top for me.

That brings me to my other small nitpick with this film.  The reason Tarantino is so hit and miss with me is that sometimes he puts a little too much of his stamp on a film.  One of those stamps is simply just going too over the top with some things.  This is a film about bad people doing bad things, I get that.  The gun fight and violence are fine and shot well, but when most of the film feels traditional (including most of the gun fight), then the occasional over the top stuff, like a head completely exploding or fountains of vomit spewing, just feel out of place.  He even put in a couple of slow motion shots.  These would be fine as well.  Slow motion works for some deaths, but I cringed at the absurdity of people actually talking in slow motion a couple of times.  There is also a brief flashback that shows some actual good people in this barren wasteland of hatred, but they are almost too good.  I get that it may be a deliberate choice to show the contrast between good and evil, but it didn't work for me.  The main characters felt naturally evil to me throughout the movie, where the people in the flashback seemed almost unnaturally giddy and bubbly.  These are of course small nitpicks, but nitpicks none-the-less.  He did have these few over-the-top sequences, but the majority of the film seemed almost subdued for a Tarantino flick.

I couldn't finish this review without mentioning one of the best parts of this film.  The score is amazing.  Ennio Morricone has had a long, illustrious career.  He is probably most recognized for his work on the Man With No Name Trilogy.  He has produced another fantastic score for this film.  It's a great western score with what almost seems like just a bit of a horror edge to it.

Overall, this is one of the better films from Tarantino.  The characters are all bad in their own way, but you still can't help wanting to stick around to see who's worse than who.  The score is great and so is the view.  It's worth seeing in the theatre for some of the first half scenes alone.  Despite my few quibbles and nitpicks, I'd say this is something to check out for Tarantino fans and western fans alike.

Memorable Quote:

John Ruth: When I elbow you in the face, it means shut up!