The Movie Room

The Hateful Eight 2015, directed by Quentin Tarantino

Rating: 8/10

I love Quentin Tarantino, and the ads when this came out made it seem to me like a snowbound Western version of And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, which is one of my favorite novels, so I expected this to become my new favorite Tarantino film. It does not reach those heights, but a “disappointment” of a Tarantino film is still a Tarantino film.

All the actors in here are fantastic, as can be assumed in a Tarantino film when they are given his usual dialogue. There was a lot of talk about the treatment of Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character, which is super harsh, but she is fantastic in the role and is never not mesmerizing. I think that she is probably the performer who drew my eye most, but the cast is still stacked deep with Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Walton Goggins, Demián Bechir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern and others. Their performances are what make this movie worth watching. When it came out, I saw it in a regular movie theater, though there was a roadshow version shown on 70 mm. I love the look of movies shot for that kind of exhibition usually, and this movie is really pretty to look at, but it kind of feels wasted. Usually that kind of cinematography is for sweeping landscapes and vistas, but here we are always in a cramped cabin, and when we do go outside during the majority of the film a blizzard makes it impossible to see very far. There definitely can be a really cool usage of 70 mm film with these limitations, but even though this movie looks great I do not think it justifies its flourish—the actors are what shine, and they would be just as good on regular film.

The biggest issue for me with this film is the structure of the script. The dialogue is still good, but the way it arranges itself feels unnecessarily complex. I love films that mess with time—Pulp Fiction, Memento, and Arrival are all fantastic partially due to the way they refuse to tell a story in order—but when time keeps going backwards and forwards here it just feels unnecessary. Some of the flashbacks just underline points that have already been super heavily bolded and italicized, while others take so long and sap the momentum that had been gathered. Tarantino is usually great at manipulating how his stories work, but the timeline here works against the thrust of the narrative for me personally. This could be because I went into it expecting And Then There Were None, where pressure builds up with each violent act, so when we have a violent act, and then a flashback that deflates the tension before going to see the aftermath, I feel like I’m not as tense as I would be in the vision I had in my head (which I know is bad criticism). 

All in all, this is my second-least-favorite Tarantino film, but that still makes it better than a lot of other films. My issues with the unnecessarily flashy 70 mm film and the jumbled timeline would definitely be bigger issues in the hands of a less competent director—here they just make The Hateful Eight into a great but flawed film instead of an outright masterpiece. I heard the extra-long version from Netflix is better, but I have yet to convince myself that adding more time to jump around haphazardly will make this movie better.