The Hateful Eight Review (feat. spoilers)

This review has a lot of massive spoilers in it. Like, loads. I’m not joking.

The Hateful Eight is a Western epic set in a tiny space (a cabin) and stretched out over three hours (too many hours). It’s not up to the standard of Tarantino’s earlier films – the iconic and interesting Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, etc, that lead to the endless discussions of his use of music by limp-haired film students, and the regrettable mass manufacture of wallets reading BAD MOTHERF***ER – but it does fine, mostly because of the incredible cast.

Tarantino long ago reached a status where he has a well of good actors who

want to work with him, much like Woody Allen but with less sinister undertones (and this film didn’t even feature QT’s usual lingering shot of a woman’s bare feet). Here he gets great performances from the ensemble, a tense group of post-Civil War characters of varying states of desperation, all locked in an isolated cabin for a day. Think Twelve Angry Men, but you already know at least one person is a murderer, and pretty much all of them are that racist one.

Special mention should go to Walton Goggins for his turn as a surprisingly nuanced hillbilly sheriff who becomes an increasingly complex character, as well as Tim Roth, who plays a foppish upper class Englishman with no nuance whatsoever, and clearly enjoys it. There’s also a star turn by Kurt Russell’s facial hair and, to a lesser extent, Russell himself, playing the bounty hunter John Ruth taking in outlaw Daisy Domergue (an appropriately horrible Jennifer Jason Leigh). Domergue’s attempted rescue, and the suspicion that any of the men in the cabin may be working with her, is what drives the plot, though not the tension.

Though you’re tricked into thinking the main character is Russell, it’s actually Samuel L. Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren. He has all the most interesting scenes, including one in which he goads old Confederate General Sanford Smithers by describing, in taught detail, how he sexually humiliated Smithers’ son before killing him. The way the scene is played out, cutting between Warren recounting the incident and flashes of the incident itself, highlights the main theme of the film, which is race – a subject Tarantino often returns to.

QT is more than aware of the cultural context in which the film has been released in America. Speaking to The Vulture he said “Finally, the issue of white supremacy is being talked about and dealt with. And it’s what the movie’s about”, and he uses the Civil War as a backdrop to go on to explore race relations. Warren turns out to be the most powerful, the wiliest, the most self aware character in the film. All of the characters are dishonest, but Warren is at least honest about his dishonesty, admitting he lies when it will disarm white people in his favour. But while Ruth contests that the rest of the cast are liars and scoundrels because they’re “mean bastards”, he’s quick to state that Warren lies because that’s just what all his race do.

The racial politics of the group are initially represented by the North/South divide of the Civil War, with the cabin being actually segregated to avoid disputes (Georgia gets the fireplace half), but even the most moderate characters liberally use racial slurs. For Warren, however, the more prejudiced the characters are the easier it is for him to manipulate them: Smithers is easily goaded into shooting at him, leaving Warren able to kill him openly, which is, of course, what he wanted all along.

When Warren has maneouvered everyone enough to gain control of the situation he is literally castrated by a white man when another outlaw (played by Channing Tatum) shoots Warren’s balls off, and he had to hide under the floor the whole time so he could catch Warren at a disadvantage. But even lying on a bed dying, bleeding from the groin and in great pain, Warren is able to kill all of his enemies, because, of course, it turns out that everyone was already in on it.

Every person at the cabin when he arrived was in cahoots with Domergue, a team of wanted criminals that should theoretically have been prey for Warren as a bounty hunter, yet who all receive better treatment than he does. They could all pretend to be ‘normal’ enough citizens; Warren never had the luxury of pretending not to be African American. The film ends on the reading of a letter from Abraham Lincoln that Warren had forged for himself that praises Warren as an asset to the country and as a friend, and with the impression that while all of the characters may have been hateful only one had a compelling reason to be. How’s all that for charged metaphor, eh? Take that Banksy, you rank f***ing amateur.

The obvious symbolism of some of the film – when Domergue is finally hanged the snowshoes on the wall behind her form wings; the film opens on a zoom out from a statue of Jesus on the cross blanketed in white snow – isn’t half as annoying as the length of the thing, comparable to what Major Warren would have us believe is the preponderous size of his knob. My showing included an interval, after which there was a jaunty voice over from QT himself spelling out why the next act was called ‘Chapter Four: Domergue’s Got a Secret’ (it’s because Domergue had a secret).

It’s a good story, but there’s no brevity of storytelling in either the writing or the editing, and by the time ‘Last Chapter’ flashes on screen it’s a relief. I’m not saying that you won’t sit there and enjoy the film (especially the bits where it veers wildly into a kind of murderous farce, with characters projectile vomiting blood everywhere like in that Family Guy scene that’s probably your favourite because you’re terribly boring). I’m saying that at the end you’ll think ‘Was that really worth almost twenty quid for a ticket?’

The worst you can say about The Hateful Eight is that it’s okay, which Tarantino would probably think is the absolute worst, given that he clearly wants it to be seen as a great masterpiece. In terms of how the film is shot it’s actually the closest thing to a normal person’s film he’s ever made, just twice as long.

One of the title cards just reads “The 8th film by Quentin Tarantino”, which prompts one to imagine the kind of serious-faced conversation you have to have with an editor in order to actually put that in your film.

Also, there are way more than 8 people in it. But you (hopefully) knew that already.