The Hateful 8 Review

If you were to believe what Quentin Tarantino told you, which would be unwise given his previous form, then The Hateful 8 means he is now only 2 films away from retiring. Hard to imagine given how big an impact his films have made that he has in fact only made 8. With classics from the 90s that broke the mould like Reservoir Dogs and possibly his greatest work Pulp Fiction, he has more recently been making an impact with historical pieces such as Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, so where then does The Hateful 8 fit into his body of work?

                Travelling through a heavy snow a stagecoach carrying 2 travellers comes along a man sat in the middle of the road, it’s during this scene that Tarantino introduces the first 3 of our so called Hateful 8. The first is Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), a bounty hunter who is heading to town to claim the bounty on the heads of the 3 bodies he has with him. The second is John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), a grizzled paranoid bounty hunter himself; he is claiming the bounty on the head of the third hateful character, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a foul mouthed rough looking criminal who spends most of her time being beaten by Ruth. Along the road Tarantino introduces the 4^th character in Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who is heading to Red Rock to be their new sheriff.  Upon arriving at Minnie’s Haberdashery to wade out the oncoming snow storm we our introduced to the other 4 hateful characters, there’s the Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir), Red Rock’s hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), cow farmer Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern).

                Setting the film almost entirely in one room really allows Tarantino room to stretch his dialogue to new lengths; the film is in 2 halves, which dramatically works quite well. The first half is about a group of very different people being forced into a room together and watching the paranoia and fractures creep in. They clash over race and profession and everything else they can, but there is constant sense that nothing is what it seems. The interval comes at a crucial turning point when the tensions finally boil over, then by part 2 everything lets rip. The performances are by in large pretty brilliant, Marquis Warren being the closest thing the film has to a lead means that Samuel L Jackson gets a lot of the films best moments, and this is definitely his best performance for a long time. Kurt Russell is brilliantly mean and surly as John Ruth and Jennifer Jason-Leigh fully deserves her Oscar nod for making Daisy Domergue so particularly hateful in a room filled with utter bastards. Walton Goggins is very enjoyable as the racist but somewhat affable Mannix, he’s in essence the comic relief of the film and he carries that burden well. Madsen, Bichir and Dern are decent but given less to do. At first it feels like Tim Roth is playing the British Oswald a bit over the top, but later revelations make the character seem more interesting than first thought.

                For the first time in a while this film feels like it’s actually about something, in the past Tarantino has been very good at making individual scenes but he fails to pull them together as a whole film, Hateful 8 does suffer from moments of this but for the most part it does feel like an actual narrative of sorts. Also, it does feel like Tarantino is actually trying to comment on racial relations post-civil war and though it is done in fairly broad strokes its effective. In addition to the usual Tarantino tropes, for the first time his film has an original score, provided by Ennio Morricone no less, it’s a brilliant dark score that captures the tone of the film but is used rather sparingly which feels like a waste. There has been much written about the film being shot in 70mm, which as impressive as it looks in the opening scenery shots, in particular the opening credits, It surprisingly works just as well in the claustrophobic setting of Minnie’s Haberdashery.

                The problem, as ever with Tarantino films, is Tarantino being his own biggest fan. There are few films which you can come out of and say that they would be improved if you removed 45mins of footage, but Tarantino is so self-indulgent that his films are nearly always far too long. What The Hateful 8 needs is someone with a greater sense of urgency, not so that it has to be fast and free with its editing, it just needs someone to say that maybe there doesn’t need to be so much time spent getting to the haberdashery to begin with.

                Problems aside though, there are so few filmmakers who make films like this, there’s an energy to this that seems like it’s only found in the work of Tarantino, it’s not his best by any means, but it feels like his best for a while. (4 Stars)