{"id":4203,"date":"2016-01-08T06:28:27","date_gmt":"2016-01-08T13:28:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4203"},"modified":"2016-01-08T06:31:05","modified_gmt":"2016-01-08T13:31:05","slug":"review-the-hateful-eight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/?p=4203","title":{"rendered":"Review: THE HATEFUL EIGHT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Screen<\/a>\"fixbutton\"<\/a>Quentin Tarantino\u2019s \u201cThe Hateful Eight:\u201d An Englishman, a Mexican, a redneck, and a black guy walk into a bar\u2026\u00a0 It\u2019s like a bad racist joke.<\/p>\n

Sure, QT has never been one for political correctness, but \u201cHateful Eight\u201d is his thumb in the eye of all those who called him out for his often gratuitous use of the N-Word combined with plentiful obvious racial stereotyping.\u00a0 But somehow, sheepishly I say, the movie is undeniably entertaining, if also universally insulting.\u00a0 While the Southerners get the worst end of it in this superbly indulgent piece of 70mm filmmaking, Tarantino has the last laugh as he takes essentially the same tight narrative that minted him with \u201cReservoir Dogs\u201d in 1992 and reinvents it by setting things in post-Civil War Wyoming.<\/p>\n

A blizzard is coming.\u00a0 And bounty-hunter the Hangman John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is hastily making his way to an outpost to find safe shelter while the storm blows over.\u00a0 In his custody is Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), a ruthless murderer scheduled to be hung in the town of Red Rock.\u00a0 Along their path they run across Major Marquis Warren (Samuel Jackson), another bounty-hunter, who has a big reputation.\u00a0 He\u2019s an escaped slave who fought for the Union, achieving a high rank in the calvary.\u00a0 Reluctantly, Ruth gives Warren a ride aboard his stagecoach.\u00a0 After a bit of banter, they meet another man who then becomes their passenger.\u00a0 The storm is steadily getting worse.<\/p>\n

In time, the three men and the murderess will find temporary safe haven at a place called Minnie\u2019s Haberdashery. But what they find there is anything but safety.<\/p>\n

Relying heavily on dialogue and performance, the actors are all uniformly good in \u201cHateful Eight.\u201d There are some surprises as the film advances to the closing act.\u00a0 Tarantino\u2019s muse, Samuel Jackson, is as much a lead as any in this ensemble piece, and he helps make the racially charged language more palatable.\u00a0 There are hints of misogamy present as the murderess, played well by Jennifer Jason Leigh, is bashed about through the bulk of the narrative. Clearly Tarantino wants to leave no single group un-offended.<\/p>\n

In 2015, it was good to see Kurt Russell back in widely released films\u2014see, also, his extended cameo in \u201cFurious 7.\u201d\u00a0 He\u2019s right at home in a Western, and this isn\u2019t the only film this year of that genre in which he appears (\u201cBone Tomahawk\u201d being the other notable entry).\u00a0 And with the soon-to-be-released \u201cThe Revenant\u201d we see a definite resurgence of Western era stories on screen.\u00a0 For my money, the best example in 2015 was writer\/director John Maclean\u2019s terrific debut \u201cSlow West\u201d starring Michael Fassbender.<\/p>\n

It is interesting that all three films employ different camera approaches in capturing the rugged frontier.\u00a0 Tarantino is committed to large format 70mm old school film (shot by multiple Oscar winner Robert Richardson). By contrast \u201cThe Revenant\u201d director Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu utilizes, under the control of cinematographer Emmanuel Lubezki, the Arri Alexa 65 digital camera. And arguably a large step downward (technology-wise) Maclean and his director of photography use the Canon 1DC, which is very much like a giant DSLR that shoots 4K video.\u00a0 All three films look really beautiful, but given the success of those shot on digital, one wonders whether the increased fascination with film will continue.<\/p>\n

Reminding us of the set up to another Tarantino written movie, \u201cFrom Dust \u2019Til Dawn,\u201d and restricting the bulk of his story to the interior of the haberdashery during a blizzard, \u201cHateful Eight\u201d builds remarkable tension around a largely talky narrative.\u00a0 The now familiar Tarantino-speak is on full display.\u00a0 But word to the wise: sensitive viewers best stay away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tarantino\u2019s \u201cThe Hateful Eight\u201d is an entertaining and universally offensive talk fest<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","no-thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4203"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4206,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4203\/revisions\/4206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4203"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4203"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyfilmfix.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4203"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}