Review by Bob Ignizio
A group of rough and rugged men and one female prisoner on
her way to be hanged get trapped in a blizzard and make plans to stay in a
tavern for three days in Quentin Tarrantino’s latest film, THE HATEFUL EIGHT. Most of the characters don’t much like any of
the others, and fragile alliances can change quickly with just the right story
or revelation. It’s going to be a tense, and ultimately bloody, layover.
It wouldn’t quite be fair to say that THE HATEFUL EIGHT is an uncredited remake of John Carpenter’s THE THING, but it certainly has some
parallels to that movie. A small group of characters are trapped together during
a blizzard. None of them can trust each other. And at least one of them is
looking to take out some or all of the others through surreptitious means if
possible, blatant ones if necessary. Only unlike THE THING, there’s no blood test to reveal who the bad guys
are. And if there was, the whole cast would likely come up positive.
Of course you’ve also got the star of THE THING, Kurt Russell, playing bounty hunter John Ruth, one of
the titular EIGHT. And the
soundtrack by Ennio Morricone, while largely consisting of new music, includes
a few cues originally written for Carpenter’s film that went unused until now.
There are other similarities, but to mention some of them would amount to
spoilers.
The other major influence on the plot seems to be the sort
of closed room “whodunit” that Agatha Christie specialized in. When a poisoning
takes place at the film’s halfway point, Samuel L. Jackson’s Major Marquis
Warren turns into something of a profanity spewing Miss Marple as he seeks to
deduce who the poisoner is. There’s also some Hitchcockian suspense leading up
to the poisoning, as the audience knows the coffee has been tampered with, but
the characters (except for the poisoner, of course, and at least one other
character) do not.
This is a film very much built on artifice and playing games
with the audience. There are touches that make sure you never forget you’re
watching a movie: a musical overture and intermission, just like the epics of
yore, and expository narration by Tarantino himself at two important points in
the film, to name the most overt.
It also seems as if some of the cast are intentionally channeling
other actors – Tim Roth comes across more like Christoph Waltz, and Demián
Bichir plays a character named “Bob” in a way that couldn’t help but make me
think of DeNiro. Which kind of works, because every character in the film is
putting on a performance of some sort. You never know how much of what any of them
say is true.
Lying is, in fact, a major theme of the film. Even the title
is a misdirection, with the number of hateful individuals who figure into the
main plot being at least nine, and arguably ten.
It doesn’t quite connect on an emotional level the way the
best of Tarantino’s films do, but as a playful filmmaking exercise it’s entertaining
while still effectively conveying its themes. Of course the usual caveats that
accompany any Tarantino film apply here: it’s full of graphic violence, general
brutality, copious profanity, and racial slurs.
And there’s an awful lot of abuse heaped upon Jennifer Jason
Leigh’s Daisy Domergue which some might see as misogynistic. Which it is,
within the story. The male characters don’t like each other, but they really don’t like Daisy.
But depicting something isn’t the same as endorsing it. If
anything this is a film that, rather than glorifying hate of any kind, shows just
how ugly and destructive it can be. And it does so while still being hugely entertaining,
and occasionally even laugh out loud funny. 3 1/2 out of 4 stars.
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