How entertaining? ★★★★★
Thought provoking? ★★☆☆☆ 23 December 2015
This a movie review of THE HATEFUL EIGHT. |
YouTube review:
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“What’s going on? You having a bounty hunter picnic?” Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins)
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s three hour Western is a return to RESERVOIR DOGS - a mesmerising use of confined space, dialogue and violence. On initial viewing this is a film one admires more than loves. (Will this be a grower that sinks its teeth in like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS?) Regardless of amour, there is plenty to enjoy. Charisma drips off the screen as seasoned character actors become one with the filmmaker’s beguiling prose. Sustaining engagement is all the more impressive, as such an epic runtime is usually reserved for sweeping historical sagas. THE HATEFUL EIGHT is predominantly set in one room.
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s three hour Western is a return to RESERVOIR DOGS - a mesmerising use of confined space, dialogue and violence. On initial viewing this is a film one admires more than loves. (Will this be a grower that sinks its teeth in like INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS?) Regardless of amour, there is plenty to enjoy. Charisma drips off the screen as seasoned character actors become one with the filmmaker’s beguiling prose. Sustaining engagement is all the more impressive, as such an epic runtime is usually reserved for sweeping historical sagas. THE HATEFUL EIGHT is predominantly set in one room.
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One was fortunate to imbibe the movie in its intended glory: Opening overture, 12-minute intermission and shown in Ultra Panavision 70 (for the screen geeks, that is a 70mm presentation in an aspect ratio of 2.76:1). Clocking in then at 187 minutes. General release will be 167 minutes. As an adorer of the silver screen, it cannot be helped that you are pulled out of the experience to admire how really widescreen the effect is. The grandiosity negates the theatrical potential of the confined location.
“Six or eight or twelve years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape,” says the production notes. A biblical blizzard is not far behind the “Last Stage to Red Rock,” states the title to chapter one. Driver O.B. Jackson (James Parks – somehow emitting a perpetual bullseye) has been hired by “John Ruth the Hangman” (Kurt Russell – sporting a moustache for the ages) to escort wanted criminal Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh – epitomising the term bolshie) for a date with the end of a noose.
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Fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson – who continues to deliver his most superlative work under the eye of Tarantino), caught out in the open, manages to inveigle himself into this chariot of supposed salvation. As in past Quentin discussions of song ‘Like a Virgin’ and Royales with cheese, a debate as to their chosen profession entertainingly unfolds, with the usual winsome sidetracks.
Another stray comes in the form of Chris Mannix (Goggins), who claims to be the sheriff of the town they are heading for. Daisy is no lady and the guys are no gents, the former unabashedly bigoted (as is Mannix) and John and Marquis not averse to hitting a woman. The stall is set for the portrayal of the contemptible on all sides of the law. Forget the vengeful Inglourious Basterds, these players are the real bastards.
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Final destination cannot be reached before the snow squall hits and Minnie’s Haberdashery, a store in the middle of nowhere, is the only option to hunker down for two or three days. Warm, fuzzy greetings are not awaiting. False bonhomie and simmering indifference emanates from those at the haberdashery: Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth), Bob (Demian Bichir), General Sabdy Smithers (Bruce Dern) and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen – you know his presence in a Tarantino flick is not going to signal a romantic-comedy). These actors are ones surely we’d all want to have a beer with, but the characters they play here are not much worse than facing the approaching blizzard. A two-and-a-half hour poker game unfurls. The stakes: Potential maiming and death. Who are all of these people? The mystery as to real identities and motivations fizzes off the screen, and the palpable threat of violence washes over the elongated frame. Yes, in case you were wondering, they really are hateful.
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