Review of The Hateful Eight (2015) by Kodey K — 23 Apr 2016

Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight' Shot Down!

Quentin Tarantino's 'The Hateful Eight" is shot in 70-millimeter format. This format gave the movie a different type of quality that you don't see in today's films. Although, shooting with this format was intended to capture the beauty of the vast snowy plains the majority of the film was shot inside of a stagecoach rest stop, a popular place for dangerous bounty hunters and tasteless outlaws, leaving you wondering what the outside world looks like. Shooting inside one location makes the film unexciting compared to the western genre and other Tarantino films. Holding to many characters within on stop makes the movie extremely hard to follow not to mention extremely uneventful!

The movie opens with a wide shot of a stagecoach rolling through snowy terrain. Occupying the wagon is John Ruth A.K.A "The Hangman" (Kurt Russell), a bounty hunter, traveling with a grimy ill mannered prisoner cuffed to himself named Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Ruth is transporting Domergue to a town named Red Rock to collect a favorable reward and to watch her hang. On this gruelingly long expiation across a featureless landscape they cross the pass of some other unappealing souls. Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a previous Union soldier and as well a fellow bounty hunter, and a former Rebel Soldier, claiming to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins).

Located in this infamous stagecoach stop there are a few more skeptical individuals to add Tarantino's beefy character stew. Starting with Oswaldo Morbay (Tim Roth), a British man that claims to be a hangman, BOB (Demián Bichir), a interesting cattle owner. Joe (Michael Madsen) a typical cowboy that doesn't like conversation and always has a corrupt smirk on his face. Lastly, a slimy racist Union general named Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern).

Within the rest stop no one is actually saying who they really are and it portrayed that it's a going to be a big game of cat and mouse trying to find out who is who. Overwhelming, it feels suspicious and you can begin to believe that everything isn't what it seems and soon things will break out into some morally correct violence as any other film directed by Tarantino but, It sure does take a while to get there! Tarantino treks through each characters savagely influenced flashbacks and visits each character's past of similar back stories and over the top gruesome murders. Tarantino lengthens the movie to a point where you lose a large amount of interest of what is going on. It starts feels as we are trapped in this unexciting building and have no clue what's going on as if we are one of the characters he had produced. Although, he does add his unique stamp of comic relief that does grasp your attention but after the dreadfully dull conversations between characters you can't find the energy to laugh. So cowboy up and enjoy the film's run time of 3 hours and 7 min of black hearted dialog and anti-climactic buildup.

Unfortunately, this film categorized in genre of westerns but you don't get to see as much of the wild frontier as you would expect in the western genre. The hateful 8 is not my kind of movie mainly because it to long and hard to follow the reason the characters are there in their first place but no one could have done this story better other than Tarantino. When it comes to characters' twist and gory over the top scenes Quentin Tarantino truly has a movie composing gift. In the story final scene, you can unquestionably relate the movie to its ghastly title. Yes, justice was finally served near those last 7 minutes of the film but unfortunately it was at the expense of my Saturday night.