The Hateful Eight

The word “sadism” comes to mind. I’m apt to conclude that when a film concludes and sadism is the first word that pops in your head, the review won’t exactly be glowing … or even favorable. And this one would be no exception were the director not Quentin Tarantino. He gets a pass because if you’ve seen a Quentin Tarantino film already, you won’t be shocked by this one. If this is your first Tarantino, however, um … don’t. Seriously. Don’t make this your first Quentin Tarantino. See Reservior Dogs or Pulp Fiction or even Inglorious Basterds, something where the sadistic violence comes with balance. The Hateful Eight doesn’t have a lot of balance.

It is the reconstruction era of the United States, yet the setting of snowy rural Wyoming needs to be constructed before it can be reconstructed. John Roth (Kurt Russell) and Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) are both independent successful bounty hunters, but with different approaches – Warren likes to bring ‘em dead while Roth is “The Hangman” – he catches you, you hang. And right now he’s caught valuable outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). He treats her as one treats a new baseball glove that needs to be broken in. Daisy’s fresh shiner shows the abuse she’s already endured before we showed up. If you’re shocked about JJL taking Russell’s elbow to the nose, Jackson’s left cross to her cheek or an abundance of the word “bitch!” – all of this happens in Chapter 1, and we know because QT has cleverly numbered and named the chapters like he did in Kill Bill — anyway, if that bugs you, you can leave right now.

Headed for Red Rock, yet unable to beat the weather, the bounty hunter stagecoach is stopped at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a one-room lodge for travelers. All is not well at the Haberdashery, but we can’t quite figure out how or why. Minnie ain’t there, neither are her kin, nor staff. And the door won’t close – the latch is missing– setting up a comical need to nail the door shut “with two boards!” to keep the snowstorm out. If Minnie ain’t there, who is? Mexican Bob (Demián Bichir) – who Warren pegs as a liar from the outset – actual Red Rock hangman Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), gunslinger Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), and new Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who, like Major Warren, was also picked up by The Hangman’s stagecoach.

Seeing the previews several times before getting to see the film, I could swear Mobray was played by Christoph Waltz. You wouldn’t believe how good Tim Roth is at playing Christoph Waltz. Do all Tarantino screenplays call for a Roth/Waltz character? I think they do.

So this is the set stage – geographical isolation (like any good horror), one big room, eight folks, one of them doomed to hang with a $10,000 price on her head to the man who can see it done, and somebody in the room is determined to see Daisy Domingue go free. Honestly, this film -shot in 70mm- could have been a play; the last two hours are all filmed on the same sound stage.

You get the feeling that this is one of those films where everybody is going to end up dead before the end credits. Maybe I’ve just seen too many Tarantinos or maybe it’s the cast of violence. For one thing, it’s pretty clear that every single person in the room has killed somebody. There aren’t innocents, just people who know intimately the leisure and business ends of a rifle. The direction is very methodical: John Roth’s #1 priority is protecting his $10,000 investment; he’s sees all other humans as potentially violent, lethal and threats. Roth interviews everybody at gunpoint, and let’s face it, if you make all conversation at gunpoint, eventually somebody is going to get shot. The Hateful Eight is meticulous in Roth’s gunpoint interview tactic, which is a pretty good way to get to exposition and explosion.

The Hateful Eight is not a masterpiece. At just shy of three hours, the picture is too long, yet the denoument comes two full chapters before the end. It’s brutal, aggressive, hateful and, yes, sadistic. It’s not an easy film to sit through and, yet, when I was at the theater the following week, I gladly spent the half-hour between films watching Hateful Eight again. Nobody does conversation quite like Quentin Tarantino.

#1 is The Hangman, lookin’ to collect
#2 is the quarry, a human reject
#3 is the Major, with letter from Lincoln
#4 stranded sheriff, what was he thinkin’?
#5 is Bob-Mex, caretakin’ the place
#6 Brit Oswald, right in your face
#7 is Joe Gage, Madsen’s been better
#8 is part Gen’ral, part Confed setter
The plot is a puzzle, with violent extremes
Is there even one who is what he seems?

Rated R, 168 Minutes
D: Quentin Tarantino
W: Quentin Tarantino
Genre: No noose is good noose
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Quentin Tarantino
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Gee, hmm, feminists, bigots, confederate sympathizers, and pretty much anybody who has never seen a Quentin Tarantino film