The Hateful Eight!!!!!!!!

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Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) has a date with a hangman’s noose and bounty hunter hateful eight 3John Ruth, “The Hangman” (Kurt Russell), isn’t letting anyone stand in the way of his ten thousand dollar reward. Just to be safe, he’s got her chained to his wrist at all times and, to show her who’s boss, decks her any time she gives him any sass. Making their way through a blizzard, their stagecoach happens on a stranger stranded on the road: Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson). “Got room for one more?” asks Marquis.

So begins The Hateful Eight, the eighth film from Quentin Tarantino. As the storm intensifies, Marquis and The Hangman are forced to wait it out in a tiny lodge with six other strangers. (It’s unclear to me which of these 9 Tarantino is excluding from being “Hateful”). I won’t attempt to describe the story that Tarantino weaves any further. No one in Hollywood tells a story quite like Quentin and for me to try to summarize the chain of events that follows in Minnie’s Haberdashery just wouldn’t be right. It’s best just to watch and let it unfold.

If you’ve been following the drama surrounding the 8th film from Quentin Tarantino, you may know that Daisy, Marquis, and The Hangman almost didn’t get to meet in snowy Wyoming. After a draft of the Hateful Eight script leaked online in early 2014, Tarantino felt so wounded that he vowed not to continue with the project. He got over it quick though. His enthusiasm was renewed three months later after a live read with the cast in Los Angeles.

His enthusiasm is contagious. I was almost giddy with excitement through the opening chapters of The Hateful Eight. It’s hard to tell quite where any Tarantino film is heading and the early scenes- with such wit, tension, and restraint- were full of promise. With each new character that he introduced, the more exciting and suspenseful the movie gets. Set in a confined space filled with people who can’t fully trust each other, The Hateful Eight is a welcome reminder of what it was like to see Resevoir Dogs for the first time. The first half is so deliberately paced that it’s tempting to think of it as the director’s most grown up film yet, tricking me into a false sense of security that left me completely unprepared for the second half.

Once the blood finally begins to spill, The Hateful Eight shows its true colours. By the end of its three-hour running time, Tarantino’s eighth film has revealed itself as his darkest, blood-thirstiest, meanest, nastiest and most pessimistic since Resevoir Dogs, a drastic shift from the tone of Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained. I still count The Hateful Eight among the best of both Quentin’s filmography and of 2015. But the enthusiasm that I felt for the first half of the film was mostly gone by the time I left the theater. I left feeling a little disheartened and even a little guilty for the briliant bit of sadism that I participated in by watching it.

Have you seen The Hateful Eight yet? Does it rank among Tarantino’s harshest or am I just getting soft?

31 thoughts on “The Hateful Eight!!!!!!!!”

  1. Carrie Rubin

    I JUST got back from seeing the 70 mm version, complete with overture and intermission. I agree–the first half was a real treat; the second was–well, I won’t say more because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone else. But I didn’t think it was his harshest. All in all I enjoyed it. Sold out theater.

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    1. Matt Post author

      I wish I could have seen it in 70 mm. The intermission and overture were actually really good ideas I thought.
      Maybe I am getting soft then. I just found the cruelty was handled with such glee that it was unusually unsettling for a Quentin Tarantino movie.

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  3. kmSalvatore

    i just started seeing commercials for this movie… i knew as soon as i saw it.. had to be Q.T. and to answer you ? just from the commercials..im going to say YES. not sure yet if ill go see this one.

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      1. kmSalvatore

        Wow.. Oldie moldies… I saw the first, omg… A very long time ago. I remember saying now that’s a film you could watch twice… Only becuz I missed so much the first time ;)))

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    1. Matt Post author

      I relished the first half. I couldn’t believe that we pretty much made it to the halfway point, apart from all the abuse that Jennifer Jason Leigh takes, without a single act of violence.

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  7. Liz A.

    After Django Unchained I promised to never see a Tarantino film again. Just too violent for me. And gross. And over the top. Not bad things for some people, but I will no longer put myself through that. (I have a very, very low threshold for that sort of thing.)

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  10. SLIP/THROUGH - Dan

    Great review and analysis. Being a Tarantino flick, I was expecting the usual 10 out of 5 performance. Like you, I loved the first few chapters, but it actually went a little south. I love the slow deliberate pace of QT films, but here it actually felt slow at times. The violence is brutal for sure, minus the satisfaction of Django’s gore. The performances are great and the storytelling is bold, but for me this ranks low in this mad scientist’s oeuvre. I need to see it again maybe.

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  11. Birgit

    This is a great review and I can see where you are coming from because I think Tarantino is brilliant but also unhinged. He shows his own demons on film and they are dark

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  12. Doug

    The H8ful Eight is forgetful. Just 20 minutes into the movie I wanted to leave, but stuck around to witness truly one of the worst movies of the century; a wasted 3 hours that I’ll never get back. The story line was mind-numbing and the acting was on par with Community Theater, if not worse. I wonder how many well respected actors said no to this piece of dirt movie. Kurt Russell was so bad that it was a relief when his character was finally killed off, even though the scene was farcical. I couldn’t wait for it all to end and I was gr8ful when it did.

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  15. ridicuryder

    Hey Matt,

    I saw it yesterday in 70mm and it has that Quentin “Am I ugly for enjoying this so much?” magic. I’m not sure if “harshness” is a real metric for Tarantino pictures…he’s beyond gritty with such gleefully warped characters that it wouldn’t surprise me to meet a Pediatric surgeon hoarding snipped-off extra fingers and sixth toes at some point. I think when the violence comes I am sorta grateful for it punctuating the plainness of his characters spiraling upwards, downwards and across a weird rhythmic Quentinverse…where you know the bottom has to drop at some point. When it does come, you are just so ready for it…whatever…please, please…just start killing people. 🙂

    RR

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  17. jwforeva

    It was thoroughly entertaining. Although I’ve seen better from him like Inglorious and Reservoir Dogs. I guess all there is in the end is just nilhilistic violence.

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