There are a lot of funny things about "The Hateful Eight," Quentin Tarantino's 8th film in his directorial canon. It was shot on a glorious 70mm film stock, and yet most of it takes place in one room. It has the outward appearance of a classic spaghetti western, and yet the claustrophobia and dialogue makes it feel more like a 'who-done-it' caper. In terms of comparing the movie to a counterpart (and as Tarantino has confirmed), it feels more like the horror flick "The Thing" than say, "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly." It's a movie of raw talent, skill, and craft. Why does it feel like the shadow of a better film?
As the title suggests, we encounter an ensemble of eight travelers from the Civil War era snowscape of Wyoming (9 if you include the driver of the wagon). One by one, we meet our band, a group of witty, street smart travelers and criminals and law men who talk with an ear for Shakespeare and a universal talent for small talk. There's Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), a bounty hunter with three fresh corpses. He flags down John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), a brazen moustache of a man shackled to his own bounty: the wildly obtuse Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh. She's just astounding in the role). Warren hitches a ride and they move on in a 'Wizard of Oz' type fashion to pick up their next passenger: a conman turned Sheriff named Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins).
So it goes for a while until they find themselves in the midst of a blizzard and marooned at Minnie's Haberdashery. Here it turns more or less into the cast of Clue, with a General (Bruce Dern), a Mexican ("Bob," played wonderfully by Demian Bichir), a hangman (Tim Roth), and a writer (Michael Madsen). With nothing to do but talk and a mystery surrounding (among other things) poisoned coffee, the fate of these eight soon becomes a test of mortality and wits.
The film, as is most Tarantino lore, is broken down into chapters, slowly introducing character by character and leading to a fairly explosive climax. The 70mm Roadshow version I watched even had an Entr'acte and Intermission. What began as a slow introduction was soon replaced with tension and filmmaking one comes to expect from a director of such insurmountable film knowledge and trivia. Midway through I was convinced this was a film of all development and no payoff. By the end I was surely proven wrong.
The screenplay is razor sharp and is carried by perhaps the most skilled cast of the year. In many ways this is a movie that resembles a stage performance, playing out in real time and using traditional blocking to progress the story with a unique dymanic. Coupled with Rob Richardson's glorious cinematography (there are truly some glorious shots) and the music of Ennio Morricone (you can just hear the whispers of some great spaghetti westerns in the simple melodies. This is an Oscar-winning score for sure), Tarantino's film indeed takes on a more cinematic mythos than his previous stories.
My problems with the film (and the reasons I found it so difficult to write a review at first) is surprisingly from the violence. For a movie with such a limited setting, the language of gore in this film is about as shocking as anything I think I have seen. Do they give NC-17 ratings on violence alone? Surely this is a film that could warrant it.
Most of the violence revolves around Daisy, a woman we are told is a savage murderer who deserves the noose. Scene after scene, we witness her being beat by Ruth, and by Marquis, and the sheriff, all manner of blows to the head and face. By the end of the film she is literally drenched in blood and brain matter, her initial black eye at the beginning of the film not even visible. This is not to denounce the film as misogynistic (would it be as disturbing if the character was a man?). My trouble with the film comes from the sadistic joy these men have abusing a woman we are told is violent, and yet never is the audience provided the same justification to hate her as well. To us, she is merely a woman in chains, beaten to within an inch of her life time after time (though through a small smile we know she is still unharmed, relishing in the anarchy she stirs to life). As a performance, Daisy Domergue is the highlight of the film and Jennifer Jason Leigh's final moments on screen are legendary. As a focus of entertainment by means of torture, I am yet to be convinced.
The rest of the film is what we would come to expect: Samuel L Jackson (surprisingly brilliant in his leading role) calling his co-inhabitants "motherfuckers" (suspension of disbelief leads me to believe this was a term coined around the Revolutionary War era), bullets fly, and the camera oftentimes leads us to clues unknown to the characters at the time. During the best scenes, this is a film that would do Hitchcock proud. At it's worst, it amounts to little more than a snuff film littered with gore and shock value for the sake of mere disgust. I still believe this is a film of unmatched skill and talent. Maybe one of the best of the year in that regard. I just think that after the credits rolled and the lights went up, the knots in my stomach were more a result of disgust than ecstasy.
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