Following in the steps of Sergio Leone and to a
lesser extent Clint Eastwood, The Hateful Eight is a continuation of the
spaghetti western idea that no one is totally good and no one is
totally bad. There is no definition like the team
dynamic where the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black.
Everyone is out for their own hide and if unscrupulous things have to
happen, so be it. Guys may get shot in the back, much to the John Wayne
ideology chagrin. That is the true code of the
west and if you want to survive, you will need to follow that every
moment of every day. Accept it.
In The Hateful Eight Quentin Tarantino gives us a
collection of flawed characters, thrown together in the middle of a
snow storm. In the center is the legendary bounty hunter (Kurt Russell)
who is known for always bringing his bounty’s
in alive, this time being a woman waiting to hand for murder (Jennifer
Jason Leigh in a great performance). They happen upon a black Union
Major (Samuel L. Jackson) who will eventually be the only person for the
bounty hunter to trust. As they wait in the
“haberdashery” they make acquaintances with the hangman (Tim Roth), the
sheriff (Walton Goggins), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), and a famed for
his viciousness Confederate General (Bruce Dern). Something is not right
at this stop and causes paranoia from all
sides.
The film plays out like a cross between an
Agatha Christie story (ala 10 Little Indians) and Tarantino’s Reservoir
Dogs. Who’s in on it? Who isn’t? Who is going to turn the tables?
Everything is there. Even though this film is more subdued
than 2012’s Django Unchained, it maintains the ability to stand on its
own as an addition to the Tarantino catalog. I had issues with the
amount of dialogue in IB and this film as a ton of dialogue, but it
flows more freely than in that previous film, possibly
because these characters are confined there. The 3+ hour running time
doesn’t harm the film either, giving you a full story without feeling
fluffed up to get to such a massive running time. It’s not normal for a 3
hour movie to have a perfect running time,
but this film really does.
It’s hard to believe that we have had Quentin
Tarantino gives us stories like this for almost a quarter of a century.
It really is an amazing achievement to take stories from genres that
were at one time considered cult or B level and crafting
masterpieces that have held up over two generations. I’m looking
forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve next.
