Review of The Hateful Eight (2015) by Themattman2 — 18 Jan 2016

If you’ve seen any of Quentin’s previous films, you know he’s pretty loose with his language–like the f-bomb is just another adjective. If you’ve seen Django Unchained, then you know he’s pretty loose with the n-word, too. Some people called it “authentic,” but I felt it was a little jarring. There was a point early in the movie when one character drops the n-word and another character says, “You know, black people don’t like to be called that.” At this point, I wondered if this film would be free of the n-word, or at least very light on it. Psych! The rest of the movie is very heavy on the word.

The movie itself seemed like a stage play. One character walks up to another character and spills his entire life story as an introduction. The second character responds by spilling his entire life story. Both stories serve as an introduction for the audience, but come off as un-natural. I had a writing teacher describe this as “soap opera dialogue.” It was odd to see it on-screen. The Broadway production of The Hateful Eight is gonna be huge.

The gore was heavy… In some parts of the movie I would consider it over-the-top. There was one scene that caused all of us to gasp. If you’ve seen The Kingsman, and you call that a “ten” for violence, I’d call this one an “eight.” It sneaks up on you, too. For the first part of the movie, little to no violence. Then BAM! Violence is hot and heavy. There’s at least one scene where I think there was violence just for violence sake–I don’t think it was realistic for that character to act that way.

If you put the language and gore aside, how was the movie? Well, it’s quite a lot of both to put aside, but I’ll try. It definitely put you into what Wyoming during a blizzard in the Old West would feel like. The sets and costumes looked terribly authentic. You see characters ride in a stage coach, and you find yourself marveling at how rough it seems in comparison to modern automobiles.

The characters wind up in a trading post cabin in the middle of nowhere on their way to a town in the middle of nowhere. It oozes authenticity, and is an eye-opener to what life was like in the Wild, Wild West.

But the language and gore… It was tough to stomach. Was language really that rough at that time? I thought language of today was a product of hip-hop, street culture. Am I just being racist? I need to do some Googling now and find out when heavy language became a “thing.