Film Review: The Hateful Eight

 

The first time you heard of The Hateful Eight may have been in January 2014 when, only two months after announcing the film, writer and director Quentin Tarantino cancelled the movie after discovering the script had been leaked. With an accusation oddly familiar to the finished film’s story, he asserted that it was one of Tim Roth, Michael Madsen or Bruce Dern that had facilitated the leak, and that the story would be written as a novel instead. A subsequent table read at the behest of the actors already attached convinced him to change his mind, and the film was this week released in the UK – albeit in selected cinemas after Cineworld decided against showing the film following a row with distributor Entertainment Films. Things never seem to be straightforward when it comes to Quentin Tarantino.

With that said, the plot of The Hateful Eight is beguilingly simple. Eight strangers trapped together in a single location, one or more of whom is lying about their identity. It’s ostensibly a Western, with early promise of a Ford or Lean-esque epic cut short when the story is restricted to a single room. We are in postbellum Wyoming, where quartet Major Marquis Warren, fellow bounty hunter John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth (Kurt Russell), his captive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and former Rebel soldier Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins) arrive at Minnie’s Haberdashery to escape an incoming blizzard. The four neither know nor trust one another, having (on the most part) met that day; a tense situation enhanced by the presence of further strangers – an elderly confederate General (Bruce Dern), a curious English hangman (Tim Roth), a stoic cowboy writing his own life story (Michael Madsen) and Mexican Bob (Demián Bichir) - at the haberdashery in which they will be stuck for the next few days. Some characters learn they have a shared history, and tensions build until a crime is committed off camera that leads to one of their deaths.

It’s an Agatha Christie style whodunit that not only masks the crime’s perpetrator, but also for the majority of the film hides what the motivation for the entire event actually is. All we are given is the constant suggestion that something is not as it seems, and that at least one person is not who they claim to be. It could be one or two characters that aren’t telling the truth. It could be all of them.

Critics of Tarantino’s work tend to talk about his self-indulgence, or his reliance on cartoonish violence to shock. The Hateful Eight follows those parameters as close as ever and although it’s hard to truly love, it’s equally hard to dislike. After an opening outside the cabin, he confines almost the entire film to within its four walls, taking the tension created with the opening scene of strangers talking around a table in Inglourious Basterds, and stretching it out mercilessly. His cinematic influences are placed front and centre as usual, with as many sublimely crafted moments of intensity as there are ridiculous conversational diversions (Samuel L. Jackson’s lengthy speech recounting the time he made a guy blow him perhaps the worst example of this from Tarantino’s career). As with all of his previous films – aside from Reservoir Dogs – The Hateful Eight seems to be a film that will only improve on subsequent viewings.

You can’t help but respect the fact that as a filmmaker, Tarantino seems to do exactly what he wants, neither pandering to calls (from the likes of Spike Lee) to tone down his use of racial language, or to restrict his use of on-screen violence. Yes his films are self-indulgent, yes they can be goofy; but they’re always enormously fun. Around the time Inglourious Basterds was released, I loathed Tarantino for his self-indulgence. But in the climate of remakes, reboots, Marvel and generally lazy, pandering filmmaking, seeing a genuine auteur continue to make the films he wants to make is wonderfully enlivening to see.

In terms of its place in his oeuvre, The Hateful Eight arguably belongs somewhere in the middle. It lacks that charm and acuity of Jackie Brown, and while ostensibly similar in its use of location, fails to match the tension of Reservoir Dogs. But it’s far from being his worst film either, with its use of a single location at least saving it from unraveling like Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained (Tarantino mercifully restrained from appearing in front of camera as well).

Perhaps most refreshingly of all, the inevitable controversy that comes with the release of any Tarantino film was decidedly muted with this time round. Whereas previous manufactured hullaballoos tend to focus on his use of racial language or on-screen violence (tacked on to the latest American mass shooting), this time it was the filmmaker’s comments about police brutality that were misreported, which caused both the NYPD and the LAPD to call for boycotts of the film. Whether you love or hate Tarantino or his movies, he’s an undeniably invigorating presence in the current climate of synthetic honesty and forced apologies: a filmmaker unafraid to speak his mind, unremitting in the freedom of his language and unrelenting in his cinematic style. 

The Hateful Eight is on general release and will be shown at Broadway Cinema until Thursday 21 January 2015.

The Hateful Eight Trailer