Film: Is this a Tarantino turkey?
Vulgar, verbose and VERY violent ... this Western has all the hallmarks of classic Tarantino – but, darn, it ain’t no Django Unchained
The Hateful Eight Cert: 18 Time: 2hrs 47 mins ★★★★★
The director Quentin Tarantino was there in person for the premiere of his new film, The Hateful Eight, at the Leicester Square cinema in London – one of the few in Europe showing the film in its original format – and warned us of the ordeal we were apparently in for. ‘About 20 minutes in,’ he said (and I paraphrase) ‘you’ll feel so cold you’ll wonder if the air conditioning has been turned on.’ That’s how cold a Wyoming winter is, he enthused, particularly when it’s captured on ultra-wide-screen, 70mm film.
Oh dear. In my experience, when a director starts talking about types of film stock and debating the merits of 35mm or 70mm, there tends to be something wrong with the underlying project. So it duly proves with The Hateful
Eight, in which the real problem was not the cold but the simple challenge of staying awake.
My goodness, does the first half of what is portentously billed as ‘The Eighth Film by Quentin Tarantino’ go on. As a writer always inclined to the prolix, Tarantino takes his verbosity to new lengths this time around, undeniably establishing an interesting premise but then over-working it almost to death with banter, badinage and, inevitably, an awful lot of cussin’.
Once it dawns that nothing resembling real action is going to happen for a very long time, this snowbound opening seems to go on and on and on. No wonder certain screenings – including the premiere – come complete with a 12-minute interval.
Of course, there are compensations. Ennio Morricone’s score – much of it, Morricone and Tarantino admit, recycled from music left over from The Thing made by John Carpenter in 1982 – is menacing, modern and magnificent. And it’s always nice to see Samuel L Jackson – a Tarantino regular since Pulp Fiction in 1994 – back in the saddle. But while the Ultra Panavision 70 – a type of film not used since Khartoum in 1966, I’m told – undeniably captures the wide-open wintry spaces of Wyoming quite beautifully, it’s
surely equally undeniable that Tarantino’s screenplay, occupying that uncomfortable ground between self-parody and selfindulgence, is slow and overwritten. Which, after the Oscar-winning brilliance of his last outing Django Unchained, is particularly disappointing. The two films book-end the American Civil War, with Django being set just before, and Hateful a modest but unspecified number of years after. It also slowly becomes apparent that the two pictures share a bountyhunting theme too, with Jackson playing Major Marquis Warren, a Civil War veteran turned bounty hunter who,
‘Leigh and Jackson are splendid in their roles, while veterans Roth and Madsen are modestly disappointing’
with a blizzard fast approaching, flags down what an on-screen chapter heading – a typical Tarantino touch – has already told us is The Last Stage To Red Rock.
The only problem is it’s already occupied by another bounty hunter, John Ruth (Kurt Russell), who’s taking his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to be hanged at Red Rock, and he definitely doesn’t want any company. Another typical Tarantino trope – the stand-off – liberally peppered with yet another one (the N-word) duly ensues, until the garrulous Warren talks his way in.
I can’t tell you how long this all takes or how many words are involved but no sooner have the new threesome set off though the snow than they encounter a fourth. ‘Considering there’s a blizzard comin’, there seem to be a whole lot of fellas walking around,’ notes Warren dryly. Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, duly climbs on board. ‘What’s goin’ on – you all havin’ a bounty hunters’ picnic?’
Half the hateful eight are assembled; the rest await at the next stop, Minnie’s Haberdashery. We’re not even halfway, not remotely.
This is a film of uneven performances and strange decisions. Leigh, for instance, is terrific as the clearly unhinged Daisy, who is regularly struck violently in the face by her captor but still bounces insanely back to make fun of the fate that awaits her. Jackson is splendid too, which is just as well as, boy, does he have a lot of lines.
Other fondly remembered Tarantino veterans, however, such as Michael Madsen and Tim Roth – Reservoir Dogs alumni both – are modestly disappointing; the former simply underwhelming as a quietly menacing rancher, while the latter gives it the full Terry-Thomas as the English hangman heading for his next appointment at Red Rock.
As for the strange decisions: why, having deliberately chosen a film format ideal for capturing the biggest landscapes, does Tarantino set two-thirds of the film inside Minnie’s Haberdashery? Especially since the format seems to be one of the reasons behind a dispute between the distributor and cinema chains, restricting the number of screens the movie will be shown at. You surely have to be a professional cinematographer to appreciate what it brings to the finished film: certainly I couldn’t see it. Just as I couldn’t see what all the nonsense about a letter that may or may not have been written by Abraham Lincoln was about either.
The second half is a huge improvement as the pace quickens, twists are revealed and we build to what we all know will be the inevitably messy climax. The hallmark blend of dark humour, ripe language and enough blood to earn it an 18 certificate will certainly keep core Tarantino fans happy, but for the rest of us – less easily persuaded of the great man’s muchvaunted talents – there’s the definite feeling of a very long shaggy-dog story that hasn’t quite been worth the effort.