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Quentin Tarantino is not in a hateful mood here
BQuentin Tarantino is an unabashed fan of TV Westerns, and his latest film, The Hateful Eight, could easily have appeared on 50’s black-and-white television, provided you took away the gore, profanity, and racial and sexist slurs. In fact, the plot of the movie borrows heavily from an episode of the Nick Adams series, The Rebel. But instead of the black and white hats typically found in vintage Westerns, Tarantino only provides the audience with black and blacker hats.
Most of The Hateful Eight takes place in a snowbound stagecoach stop in Wyoming. Bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is on his way to the town of Red Rock with wanted murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He soon suspects that one or more of the other passengers waiting at the stop for the weather to clear are there to free Domergue. The only person Ruth somewhat trusts is fellow bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), also on his way to Red Rock to collect bounties.
Unlike the writers of Tarantino’s beloved TV westerns, who wrapped up stories like this in less than 30 minutes, he takes nearly three leisurely hours here. Most of that time is spent listening to characters spin lengthy stories, occasionally punctuated by shockingly violent moments that are even more so after the audience has been lulled by the film’s casual pace. Tarantino has assembled some of the best storytellers in the business in Hateful Eight. Besides Russell and Jackson, old pros Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, and Bruce Dern are on hand at the stage stop, and Walton Goggins, the town’s new sheriff, arrives on the same stagecoach as the bounty hunters. Tarantino goes out of his way to show that none of the characters are particularly admirable. Warren coldly torments one of the passengers to goad him into a gunfight while Ruth repeatedly and casually slaps Domergue around. A little of this goes a long way, and the movie has too much unrelenting cruelty, misogyny, and casual racism, simply for its own sake. But Hateful Eight has a clever plot, including a well staged flashback halfway in that puts the audience well ahead of the characters. Better editing (a word with which Tarantino is apparently unfamiliar) would have made The Hateful Eight a top-notch two-hour Western, but, for those not offended by the content, it’s still an entertaining stagecoach ride.
Continue reading on The Hateful Eight: Mini-review
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