The Hateful Eight

Tarantino's epic Western is his best since 'Jackie Brown'

Finally, a Quentin Tarantino film that isn’t a revenge fable.

The controversial but oft-lauded writer/director’s previous four films are all about some form of vengeance. There’s the lone warrior woman out to kill a guy named Bill (“Kill Bill”), and the group of girlfriends bent on emasculating a serial killer armed with a deadly muscle car (“Death Proof”). In “Inglourious Basterds,” Tarantino seeks payback on behalf of the entire Jewish race; most recently, in “Django Unchained,” he followed a freed slave-turned-righteous hero in the antebellum South, on a mission to kick some cracker ass and save his woman.

The genres were different, but the theme remained the same. There’s no doubt he grew as a filmmaker over the course of the last four movies, even if, as a stylist, he continued to crawl further up his own ass. These movies were exciting in ever more absurdist ways, yet began to feel a little shopworn as the work became suffused with the hubristic confidence of a filmmaker too obviously pleased with himself.

Which brings us to “The Hateful Eight.” Tarantino has largely abandoned the navel-gazing indulgence of his recent output to give us his most disciplined, accomplished film since 1997’s “Jackie Brown.”

Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is an ex-slave who rose through the ranks of the Union army before becoming an infamous bounty hunter. He’s on the road to Red Rock, Wyoming, hauling the bodies of three dead men. Lacking a horse, he hitches a ride with John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), another bounty hunter escorting the vicious outlaw Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to her date with a rope.

The newly-allied colleagues pick up the wayward Chris Mannix (Walt Goggins), the son of a famous Confederate brigadier who now claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock—a.k.a. the guy who can’t pay Warren and Ruth their bounties unless they give him a lift to town.

Outrunning a violent blizzard, they’re all forced to take shelter for several days in Minnie’s Haberdashery, a general store on the outskirts of Red Rock, with four strangers who may not be who they seem.    

And that’s all you need to know—this is a mystery, after all. But not unlike “The Force Awakens”, “The Hateful Eight” is a quasi-remake. Though in this case, it’s a remake of a literal remake—John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi horror masterpiece, “The Thing”—albeit set in the post-Civil War West and without the shape-shifting alien.

Ruth’s alliance with Warren mirrors the cagey relationship between “The Thing’s” MacReady (also played by Russell) and Childs (Keith David). When it becomes clear their roommates might not be who they say they are, a test is used to discover just how much of Denmark may be rotten. Daisy, like Carpenter’s alien, is desperate to escape to safety.

There are other similarities, some stylistic, and others too spoilery to mention, but if those examples aren’t enough, consider the soundtrack: the great original score by Ennio Morricone is complemented by tracks from Carpenter’s film, which Morricone also composed.

Tarantino’s detractors will not be surprised that he’s repurposed yet another movie he compulsively watched to death on VHS as a teenager. But, in this case, he takes that influence and turns it into compelling, often rapturous cinema.

He’s dialed back on his own sensibilities in strange ways, like shooting on Ultra 70 Panavision film, though mostly inside the confines of one interior location (regardless, Robert Richardson’s cinematography is unerringly gorgeous). He largely abandons the hip affectation of his dialogue, though it still sounds like anachronistic poetry. His penchant for novelistic chapters remains, though the story is much more linear. And he’s written a woman as an unrepentant villain, whose abuse seems disturbingly justified.

By design, no one in “The Hateful Eight” is likeable, but they all have their charms, which is the miracle of Tarantino’s keen sense for casting. I don’t need to tell you that Sam Jackson, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen, Walt Goggins, or Demián Bichir know how to chew scenery on a near mythic scale. The filmmaker nests his characters’ stories with grace as they reveal themselves through crackling conversations peppered with sporadic bursts of incredible violence (both physical and emotional).

“The Hateful Eight” is the most mean-spirited film Quentin Tarantino has ever made. While the template may be Carpenter, the demeanor is Peckinpah. No matter how reprehensible these people get, it’s impossible to look away.

"The Hateful Eight" opens today at Circle Cinema. 

For more from Joe, read his review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens.