The Hateful Eight

Release Date: December 25th, 2015
Running Time: 168 minutes
Written & Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, Demián Bichir, Channing Tatum, James Parks

With The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino continues his forte of making pics that are part homage and part reinvention of classic film genres. He first established his niche in this regard with his masterpiece Pulp Fiction (1994), inverting the traditional crime drama by giving the spotlight to character types who commonly appear as supporting players in gangster films and pulp novels of the past. He turned the traditionally peripheral archetypes of the henchmen, the girlfriend, and the crime boss into protagonists, and composed the story with scenes that might usually occur after the main narrative segments end and the cameras stop rolling. With humourous dialogue, pop culture references, cartoonish violence, and shifts in time and perspective, the film resulted in a thoroughly ironic work that made something fresh and exciting out of overused film storytelling conventions. At the end of Pulp Fiction, one of the protagonists, Joolz (Samuel L. Jackson), undergoes a dramatic character change by way of a spiritual experience, swears off of a life of violence, and thus achieves a kind of redemption. It all amounted to something meaningful wherein seedier plot details were elevated—in a cleverly meta-cinematic way—beyond mere escapist entertainment. 

This successful blend of pastiche and parody made Tarantino a filmmaking star in the 1990s. But with the Kill Bill films (2003-2004), outlandish technical gimmickry, over-the-top characters, and more cartoonishly graphic violence than he ever did before plunged him into self-indulgent filmmaking in which spectacle surpassed substance. And this has continued with all of his films since, rendering his postmodern, deconstructionist routine tiresome. While no QT film is without its positive attributes, intriguing narrative elements are often overshadowed by his overambitious cinematic flourishes, as each film eventually degenerates into cheeky violent theatrics. Making genre pics that attempt to subvert common genre pitfalls by way of exaggeration has become a played out angle. As a fan of QT's early work but having become increasingly irritated with his cinephile fanboy schtick, I expected to entitle this article "TARANTINO'S HATEFUL EIGHTH FILM". But—although not without its many issues—there are some positive elements (particularly in the first half) to make me not outright hate the movie.

The Hateful Eight is apparently an homage to the classic cinematic genre of the American Western with its title reminiscent of The Magnificent Seven (1960), although QT said it was more so inspired by television series like Bonanza and The Virginian. The first half is compelling, introducing a number of characters travelling through snowy Wyoming a few years after the American Civil War. When his horse dies, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is stranded on the road. Along comes a stagecoach, paid for by its passenger—bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell). Ruth's known as "The Hangman" due to his principle of turning bounties in alive to see them tried and hanged, rather than shooting them dead and bringing in the bodies. And so we meet the other coach passenger, Ruth's bounty—murderous outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh)—whose wrist Ruth has chained to his own while en route to the town of Red Rock. Warren is a reputed war veteran, and Ruth agrees to let him aboard. Shortly thereafter they come across another man seeking a ride—former Confederate militiaman Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Ruth despises Mannix's Southern values as a racist military man who seeks to perpetuate the ideals of slavery, but nonetheless lets him on the coach. Tensions run high as the politics of racism and the American Civil War are debated by these characters occupying different places on the sociopolitical spectrum.

An impending snowstorm forces them to seek refuge at a stagecoach station called Minnie's Haberdashery, where four more characters are introduced. And here the setup is complete, establishing an intriguing premise of several disparate scoundrels trapped together in a cabin as a blizzard rages outside. At this point the film feels like a stage play, with its relatively small cast and limited setting, and turns into a bit of a mystery as it’s revealed that some characters are not who they appear to be. But shady characters, all. It's complete with a Hitchcockian, suspenseful score, courtesy of legendary screen composer Ennio Morricone.

Midway through, the so-far straightforward narrative takes a turn when QT himself suddenly contributes omniscient voiceover narration, drawing the audience's attention to details that were occurring in the background during the previous scene. This is typical of QT's self-reflexive, self-important approach, and comes off here as him thinking he's being clever when it's actually just kind of obnoxious. Then another familiar QT technique occurs with a jump further back in time, depicting events from other characters' perspectives. But this flashback sequence feels somewhat contrived, undermining the film's suspenseful setup with a rather lackluster explanation. And it all adds up to a bloodfest climax. QT's at his best when he focuses on character and dialogue and stays away from his hipster brand of ironic violence and overdone exploitation film shenanigans. Alas, inevitably his pics of late at some point deteriorate into an amoral celebration of death and gore. Apparently he thinks portraying gruesome savagery in the movies is groovy, seemingly getting off on torture and killing.

QT also relishes other elements of exploitation cinema here, as the dialogue is saturated with rape jokes, homophobic jokes, misogyny, and racial epithets. African American filmmaker Spike Lee has had an ongoing feud with QT over his use of the word "nigger". Upon the release of QT's Jackie Brown (1997), Lee said in an interview, "I'm not against the word...some people speak that way. But Quentin is infatuated with that word. What does he want, to be made an honorary black man?" QT defended himself by saying, "That's how a segment of the black community that lives in Compton...where Jackie Brown takes place—that is how they talk. I'm telling the truth. It would not be questioned if I was black, and I resent the question because I'm white." Lee referenced the debate in his darkly comical race satire Bamboozled (2000) wherein a white character defends his use of the word in front of black characters, saying, "Fuck Spike Lee. Tarantino was right. If Ol' Dirty Bastard can say it, so can I!" Then, upon the release of QT's Django Unchained (2012), Lee commented, "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors...American slavery was not a Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors were slaves, stolen from Africa." 

There's merit to QT's perspective that it's a mistake to dumb down harsh realities that films depict, and that artists should be able to tell the truth as they see it. But throwing around the n-word in an homage to '70s blaxploitation flicks, as in Jackie Brown, is different than embellishing the brutality of slavery in a playfully stylized manner as in Django Unchained. And The Hateful Eight continues QT's rampant use of the word. There's once again a contextual argument for it, given that the film is set in a time immediately following the American Civil War in which issues around slavery and race tensions remain high. But QT uses his authority as a filmmaker as some kind of license to revel in the word's excessive use. I'm not one to be easily offended, and I find lively storytelling details that push the edge appealing—but only when executed in creative, conscientious, and/or satirical ways, to explore something interesting about humankind. But QT's apparent genuine reverence of cinematic racism and violence more so distracts from this story than enhances it. Maybe he thinks his use of the n-word accurately depicts the racism of the time—and maybe it does. The major hole in his argument though is that he does not make realistic films, so the excessive n-word usage here comes off as exploitative, seemingly aimed at shocking and/or getting laughs rather than as thoughtful commentary.

Sexism is likewise glorified here. The word "bitch" isn't used as much as the n-word, and misogyny was much more overt in those times than now, but severe cruelty is shown to the woman character as she's repeatedly beaten, belittled, and has a bowl of hot stew thrown in her face (and much, much worse). And she seems largely indifferent to it all, portrayed as a daft, punch-drunk wench. Sure, she's a murderess, and of course women were valued far less in those days, but it's all so mean-spirited and not funny as QT seems to think. The way he infuses violence with humour reveals an adolescent, fratboy sensibility, as it all too often feels like he thinks it's hip and edgy. 

A redeeming quality of some Tarantino films is that they show ass-kicking cinematic justice being served to those who do evil. But that aspect is perpetually compromised by QT's emphasis of the superficial and the aesthetic, of style and irony over substance and sincerity. He's become less of an auteur and more of an egotistical fanboy filmmaker whose one-note contribution to cinema is these kinds of sarcastic nods to classic film genres. His movies have a smug "wink wink, nudge nudge" feel, as if he's saying, "look how cool and clever I am, and how many movies I've seen". Indeed, his famous quip is, "I never went to film school, I went to films". It's a good line, except that most of what he's done lately is this continual retreading and referencing of old movies, without clarity on what this might signify. Is he saying that there's inherent value in continually making movies that so strongly emulate past cinematic styles? Is he claiming that it's all been done already?

A proud, self-professed film nerd, QT shows an equally strong passion when talking about Elvis movies as when talking about foreign art films. In this regard, as a critic and film historian, I admire him. I find his opinions on movies more interesting than movies he makes, as he truly loves the art form and is not afraid to favour genres that other highbrow academics look down on, such as martial arts films, horror, crime, and other exploitation, B-movie, and cult film genres. He's a talented and knowledgable filmmaker, but I'd like to see him grow up and make a serious movie for once. Whenever he shows hints of emotionally resonant and/or politically provocative storytelling, he inevitably regresses into the same old hedonistic, escapist, ultra-violent gags. The engaging moments show that QT has a talent for compelling story nuances, but all too often buries them in this gratuitous degradation that he seems to wallow in. What sets Quentin Tarantino's best works apart from his last four or five films is that the early works emphasize character and dialogue as much as or more than the violent, racist, sexist elements. The Hateful Eight starts out showing signs of that, but gets caught up in the same annoying film nerd trappings that Tarantino can't seem to evolve away from.
Rating (out of 5): ★★½
• Nik Dobrinsky / Boy Drinks Ink
January 17th, 2016