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'The Hateful Eight' - Clothed in poetic snowstorm with simmering tension
Theatrical and somber: The Hateful Eight, currently in movie theaters, is a challenging, moody outing for Quentin Tarantino
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Theatrical and somber: The Hateful Eight, currently in movie theaters, is a challenging, moody outing for Quentin Tarantino.(Courtesy of Eric Wirjanata) (Courtesy of Eric Wirjanata)
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span class="inline inline-center">Theatrical and somber: The Hateful Eight, currently in movie theaters, is a challenging, moody outing for Quentin Tarantino.(Courtesy of Eric Wirjanata)
Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight sees the director's most theatrical outing yet.
Its poetically somber disposition will feel like a slog for some and purposefully disquieting for others.
More tension-building than ever before, Tarantino stretches out his characteristically dialogue-laden table setting into covering roughly two-thirds of the movie, with some gruff momentum building that more often works than not.
Something of a closed-room whodunnit with a Western aesthetic, the film is an Actors (with a capital 'A') movie clothed in a poetic snowstorm and moody blizzards, with the tension simmering for a long while before a gust of gun-drawn blood splatters in a violent cabaret that feels more blistering it in its semi-nihilism than even the director's bloodiest outings.
There's a treading sadness throughout that unravels as the film's colorful characters reveal their post-war morals or immorality, although the constant detouring toward discussions of racial injustice feels leaden, less engaged and too in contrast with the film's lean on stereotyping (Tarantino's minorities-finds-justice-through-violence feels almost cartoonish here).
Set in picturesque wintry Colorado trappings during a post-Civil War America, the film finds its cast of characters somewhat trapped in a drafty outpost named Minnie's Haberdashery, where the soup is good and the verbal clashes better.
Among these are bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is known as 'The Hangman' for his habit of making sure his bounties are hanged to their death, bounty Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a rare black major named Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and an ex-Confederate sheriff, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins).
At Marnie's, this first group meets with other, similarly shady characters that include an actual hangman (Tim Roth, doing a Christoph Waltz with extra giddiness), a mysterious cowboy (Michael Madsen, doing a regularly skeevy Michael Madsen) and former Confederate general Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern, unregretfully racist).
Composer Ennio Morricone does as well as one would expect a legendary composer would do, although Tarantino sets the musical mood closer to retro horror, such as in John Carpenter's The Thing, of which Hateful's deliberate mysteriousness owes a thing or two, too.
As the characters finally converge, Tarantino still keeps the conversation going. Themes of racism cover much of the dialog although never really seem to garner a point.
Better are moments when the characters ' all eyeing each other with suspicion ' size up one another's propensity for distrust and/or evil. This lurking evil stays a long while and Tarantino's usually biting dialogue starts to drag, with moments that don't really pay off in the end.
A flashback that is meant to explain things at the film's conclusion feels too sluggish as exposition and the narrative falls for it.
Fortunately, the acting, and Tarantino's better moments make up for things. The temperament and somewhat claustrophobic atmosphere is sustained throughout, owing much to the actors conviction (Bridges stands out as a man with a dark set of morals, while Jackson lets go of his blockbuster autopilot routine, even giving an argumentatively racist-homophobic routine some welcome humor).
It is unfortunate that the story's central mystery doesn't pack as much punch as, say, the twists and turns of Tarantino's other output, such as Pulp Fiction.
The whodunit feels more like a Macguffin rather than anything that propels the narrative into anything more substantial.
Those who are fans of the director will likely find it difficult to decide where The Hateful Eight will go in their list of favorite Tarantino movies, but some sluggish moments aside, it still feels like a natural if experimental progression for Tarantino, for better or worse.
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The Hateful Eight
(The Weinstein Company, 170 minutes)
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Jeff Bridges, Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Dern, Tim Roth
