Hateful Eight, The (2015) | Film Review

(Second Viewing via Paramount+) - It's hard to judge a Quentin Tarantino film based on a single film alone. I find myself, as I believe many do, often weighing his films against his other films to see where it fits within his oeuvre. As a filmmaker, QT is unique like that. He's cultivated a very cult-like attitude when it comes to his releases. They're more than movies... they're events. They're culturally significant timestamps for viewers. At least, that's how I perceive them anyway. 

When I first saw The Hateful Eight, I hated it. As a Tarantino fan, I walked out of the theater thinking it was overly long, self-indulgent, and despite the stellar cast, very boring. This was a feeling that started growing with his two prior films as well. Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained both left me feeling like the filmmaker really need someone in his life to tell him no. I didn't get on board with the revisionist history of Basterds, and Django just came off as a director sniffing his own farts. So the bar was already set pretty low when I first saw The Hateful Eight. I was prepared to be disappointed, and disappointed I was. 

I remember seeing an interview once with Tarantino where the interviewer said that Jackie Brown was his favorite film of his. QT retorted, "Well then you don't like my movies." That hit pretty hard with me, because at that point, Jackie Brown was my favorite of his films, followed by the rest of the films that made up the first half of his career. Perhaps because, of all of his films, it's the most conventional. The tide started turning for me with Kill Bill. While I still liked Kill Bill, I couldn't help but feel like Quentin started going off the rails. I also couldn't shake the fact that his earliest films (some of his best in my opinion) had Roger Avery sort of over his shoulder. Perhaps Avery was that guiding force QT needed in order to tell a great story start to finish.

But then something happened -- Once Upon A Time in Hollywood came out, and to my surprise, I really enjoyed it. While I heard many people sharing the very same thoughts on Hollywood as I had for his previous three films, for some reason, this time these issues didn't seem to bother me. The altered history, the self-indulgence... for the first time in four films, I was able to enjoy a Tarantino movie on the level that I think it was intended. This revelation had me thinking that I had perhaps either misjudged the previous films, or maybe something had changed in me.

It's been a few years since Hollywood came out, and I have since gone back and rewatched Django and Basterds, and actually enjoyed them the second time way more than I thought I would. 

But The Hateful Eight was a different beast. I thought there would be no way was this movie worth even revisiting. That first viewing felt like a long painful slog through a blizzard up a mountain on the way to Minnie's Haberdashery. It was a walk I had no desire to take, and a place I had no desire to revisit.

However, as the years passed and more distance was put between that first experience and myself, I couldn't help but shake the feeling that maybe, just maybe, I should give it a try. I mean, my opinion of Basterds and Django had changed, and it's got a terrific cast... surely Kurt Russel, Sam Jackson, Walton Goggins and the rest of the cast are worth a second effort, right? I think so.

So today, I decided it was the day to pull on the hiking boots, jump on O.B.'s stagecoach headed for Red Rock, and see if this time I could enjoy the ride.

To me, The Hateful Eight has a lot in common with Reservoir Dogs. A great cast of despicable characters confronting each other in a singular place. While there are scenes that take place outside of the main setting, Dogs plays out mostly in an abandoned warehouse, and Eight plays out largely in Minnie's Haberdashery. The parallels between the two movies really stuck out to me upon second viewing. The character motivations are a bit different, and in this case swap Nash for Jennifer Jason Leigh's Daisy, and guys trying to sniff out an interloper or two (or three ((or four)) and you'll find that these films have a lot in common with each other.

Despite the confined settings -- stagecoach, barn, store -- QT really made the most of the space he had. I understand that he filmed it using special lenses and whatnot (that's all above my pay grade), but it was very clear that whatever space he had to play with, he had a vision on how to make it feel enormous. I heard a clip of Paul Thomas Anderson describing the cinematography as feeling epic, and I couldn't agree more. Yet while the confined space felt wide open, it also felt like danger lurked over every inch of the place. 

The acting is top notch, of course. Goggins and Leigh are the standouts here. At the time of Eight's release, Walton Goggins was perhaps the least well known to average moviegoers, but he more than carried his own against the rest of the cast. Jennifer Jason Leigh seemed to be reveling in her role as a maniacal gangster headed for the gallows. Madsen, Roth and Jackson are Tarantino regulars, and they seem to always bring their A-game when it comes to delivering his dialogue. I was surprisingly more impressed with Kurt Russell's performance when he wasn't saying anything. The intensity that hung on The Hangman's face when he'd turn those squinted blue eyes at Daisy with an aggressive apathy to her well-being was fantastic. His quasi-John Wayne impression, however, didn't quite work for me. Not enough for me to dislike his performance, but enough for me to not miss him toward the end of the film.

While I think an argument could be made that Eight didn't need to be nearly three hours long, it's hard to tell a story teller with this group of toys to stop playing with them. Because, essentially, that's what Tarantino is: He's a toy maker who loves playing with his toys. He builds the toys he wants to play with, and then plays the crap out of them. And upon second viewing, that's exactly what I saw, and I was there for it.

Though I enjoyed The Hateful Eight much more than I did upon second viewing, I still think it ranks nearer the bottom of his films overall. Then again, a Tarantino movie is a Tarantino movie, which means it stands apart from the rest of cinema. I can honestly say now that there isn't a QT movie I don't enjoy, because I now understand what watching a QT movie actually means. His are not films to be watched on the same level as other films, but rather, they are an invitation to watch a man play with the toys he created. And I can honestly say, I'm a fan.

If you're still reading this, thank you for indulging me. Let me know what you thought of The Hateful Eight with a comment.

Until next time, my name is J. Kern Radtke, the reformed movie geek, and I'm off to Red Rock.