Out of all the filmmakers who arose in the independent film boom of the 1990s, Quentin Tarantino has had arguably the most success, creating an instantly identifiable style and almost never failing at the box office. This success has given him a power to indulge his whims that’s unparalleled in Hollywood, a power which has led to some exciting historical revisionism in Django Unchained and Inglourious Basterds, but also to some bloated errors in judgment, such as The Hateful Eight. While there are many things to enjoy in the film, The Hateful Eight cannot escape tasting like leftovers from Tarantino’s previous work, given some Old West spice to no great effect.
Set in Wyoming, shortly after the Civil War, we meet eight supposed strangers who must seek shelter from a blizzard together. The strangers range from bounty hunters (Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell), criminals (Jennifer Jason Leigh), to a possible sheriff (Walton Goggins) and a Confederate general (Bruce Dern). Secrets arise, tempers flare, and violence erupts. Tarantino is famous for slow boiling standoffs like in Reservoir Dogs or Inglorious Basterds, and The Hateful Eight is essentially a three-hour version of this for good or ill. The opening, with its chilly Morricone overture, makes clear that Tarantino is trying to blend two genres, the epic western and the thriller, more specifically a kind of Key Largo or Agatha Christie-esque chamber drama. But this new combination doesn’t reap new rewards, instead bringing about a self-defeating worst of both worlds. It’s almost perverse that Tarantino would go to such lengths to shoot and show this film – almost entirely enclosed in one simple, dimly lit cabin – in 70mm. This confinement not only eliminates any epic qualities the film might aspire to, it keeps Tarantino from utilizing the fun, hyper-kinetic style he used to such great effect in Pulp Fiction, while the totally unjustified three-hour running time deflates the tension. Tarantino in his prime was adept at conveying backstory from an artful shot or single line of dialogue, whereas in The Hateful Eight, he labors through overlong stories to explain the obvious, like that the Confederates don’t like the black guy.
For all the hours of dialogue we’re treated to, the characters really don’t differ that much beyond perfunctory variations in facial hair and winter coats. The title tells it – they’re all hateful killers with few to no positive qualities – and any allegiances that develop are mere blips as the cabin descends into a bloody abattoir. In his early films, Tarantino portrayed stylish killers, sure, but there were also characters from other walks of life that rounded out the world and made it feel manifold and real. But since Jackie Brown came out in 1997, he has been steadily removing from his work all characters that deviate from his trademark talky killers, resulting in this film with its total absence of any other kind of character. Given this lack of diversity, it’s hard to find a compelling reason beyond the horse race aspect to care which, if any, of the piranhas manage to leave the tank alive. Tarantino’s shift towards the historical is beginning to seem like a cynical excuse to lend moral authority to his standard revenge narratives. Whatever historical insights The Hateful Eight can claim are juvenile at best, and the setting seems like an irrelevant façade to cloak a philosophy of teenage nihilism.
