Quentin Tarantino's been on such a powerful run the last few years that it's easy to forget that the beginning of his career as a filmmaker was predominantly spent making incredibly well-written, well-crafted homages to other genre films. While he's never lost this unique style for his latter films (Inglorious Basterds is a Nazisploitation flick i.e. Illsa and the She-Wolves, Django is blacksploitation meets spaghetti westerns), he's put it to good use discussing topics like race, propaganda and the misappropriation of culture.
In contrast The Hateful Eight feels like Tarantino cutting loose. Taking a step back from controversial topics and returning to a masterful dissection of linear storytelling. Admittedly one flavored with the slick dialogue, big characters and sadistic violence that one expects from the man. The result is easily one of the most violent, twisted and nihilistic films to come out in a long time but no less fascinating and most importantly entertaining for it.
The deceptively simple set-up finds Kurt Russell as John 'The Hangman' Ruth escorting his bounty Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to hang sometime in post-civil war Wyoming. Along the road he picks up two disreputable characters; fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and renegade-turned-sherriff (he claims) Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). With a blizzard threatening to freeze them the group take shelter in Minnie's Haberdashery only to find the proprietor has left for the week, a group of likewise disreputables are taking refuge and everyone finds something amiss about the whole situation.
In fact everyone at Minnie's Haberdashery is hiding something or other and it's there that the film has more in common with Agatha Christie than Charles Portis. With the titular eight (plus Ruth's driver O.B.) trapped together watching Tarantino's dialogue slowly nurse out details of characters, almost all of whom are working to mislead both each other and the audience.
This is the closest the film comes to an underlying theme. Like the mythologised heroes and villains of the old west the character know each other mostly by reputation. Ruth and Warren are notorious as bounty hunters and Mannix is a known vigilante and we only have his word that he's now Sheriff of the nearby town. Meanwhile the other members of the octet include General Smithers (Bruce Dern), a confederate soldier with a reputation of his own, Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) a soft-spoken Englishman with his own business cards, Joe Gage a withdrawn cowboy content to write his memoirs and Bob a suspicious Mexican who claims to be running the place in Minnie's absence.
Inevitably tensions flare between the group and allow the cracks in each facade to emerge. Most notably Warren's who makes it clear that he is no parallel to Tarantino's Django. Stripped of any romanticism Jackson's Warren freely admits both his heroics during the civil war and his work as a bounty hunter is purely an excuse to revenge himself on white people. Revealing the depth of his sociopathy in an epic monologue that serves at the catalyst for everything to go to hell in the final chapters.
While Jackson is the showstopping performance everyone else takes the opportunity to quietly impress upon us. As the sole cast member with nothing to hide Leigh's Domergue occupies the role of a mischevious imp, providing some of the film's dark humour as she gestures and cracks unsavory remarks (to say the least). Unfortunately she's also the character that suffers the worst despite committing the least of the hateful eights atrocities. Tarantino's treatment of her feels constantly like a tonal bait and switch, inviting us to laugh at the slapstick nature with which she's assaulted only to make us feel guilty as the camera lingers on her agonized face and dripping blood.
The real surprise here though is Walton Goggins as Mannix. Goggins has been around for years as the kind of actor you've always seen but could never name, usually playing foolhardy, disreputable characters like Mannix. Here he's playing delightfully to type but positioned as a character who always seems just on the verge of doing the right thing. He never approaches anything resembling redemption, remaining a thoroughly despicable bigot, unapologetic over his past atrocities but Tarantino at least gives him a satisfying conclusion.
As usual Tarantino's craftsmanship is well on display. His dialogue feels at once typically otherworldly yet completely natural. With few exceptions the cinematography passes by beautifully with little of the directorial flair that can often break the illusion. As with Django Unchained the films Achilles heel is in the editing. It seems Tarantino, along with the audience, is still morning the loss of Sally Menke. The opening shots drag on far beyond the point of spectacle, the chapter breaks merely serve to stall the proceedings and the first hour could stand to be significantly trimmed. The film pick up momentum significantly once we enter Minnie's Haberdashery and doesn't drag again until the final moments.
The Hateful Eight is unlikely to go down as Tarantino's finest film. It's a compelling mystery drama clothed as a Western but does very little new with the material. Filmmakers have been trying to destroy the romance of the Old West since the days of Soldier Blue and while Tarantino brings a fresh new take it isn't worth the slog of the films weaker moments. When it works though, it works. Fun, shocking, tense, even sad at times. It's the kind of film I'm willing to call a flawed gem, something that shines to me and maybe you too.
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