Seeing a new Quentin Tarantino film is often like ordering a new dish in your favorite restaurant. It's a different kind of something you probably already love, and going into The Hateful Eight is certainly no different.
That Tarantino has evolved as a director is an unquestionable fact. Unlike Peter Jackson for example, who somehow made the transition from gross-out cult horror flicks to colossal budget blockbusters in one step, Tarantino has evolved into a bigger version of the same beast. He's moved from the one-set piece gritty crime movie into grand scale gritty crime genre experience. The same style of sharp, profanity laden dialogue that was once delivered by a petty thief in an LA backdrop is now spoken by a cowboy in another place in time. He's exchanged the rooftops of Hollywood for the old west and beyond, but Tarantino is still definitely the man he once was.
The Hateful Eight is the next step on in Tarantino's constant stride, and delivers some of the finest grim and hilarious dialogue that you're used to in a Tarantino film. It carries the size and scope of Django Unchained, along with the western frontier setting, and mixes it with the pulp exploitation cinema feel of Inglourious Basterds. Most stunningly, with a run time clocking in just over 3 full hours, The Hateful Eight at no point feels too long. It's time well spent, with every scene a character filled tableaux of utter bastards, bounty hunters, criminals, all wrapped up together in an old school whodunit of murder and revenge.
To tell too much of the story would give the whole game away, so sticking to the basics, it goes a little like this: A carriage containing a famous bounty hunter and his latest high priced acquisition trundles through the frontier wastes trying to outrun a massive snowstorm, their only hope is to make it to a tiny isolated store in the middle of nowhere to hole up until the storm passes. Along the way they cross paths with another bounty hunter, even more dangerous than the first, who comes along for the ride, and they exchange pleasantries and suspicions aplenty. These two hard assed bounty hunters are two of the films standout performances, with Kurt Russel and Sam Jackson both back on top form, and a joy to watch. The pair encounter another western staple, the shady cowardly bastard type, who's on his way to becoming the new Sheriff of the town up ahead, and under pressure end up taking him along too. The cast begins to increase bit by bit, each character adding to the background of others as it seems everyone seems to know a little about everyone else. It starts to feel a little like a Poirot story, each time a character gets a little flesh, they gain a few nasty notches on their backstory along with it.
When the troupe reach their destination, a battered but welcoming store filled with supplies and a roaring fire, the storm is upon them, and shacking up for the duration, the mean bastards who populate the place try to settle in for the long night ahead. Among those gathered within the store are some classic Tarantino personalities, like Tim Roth as an eagerly chatty hangman, and a sullen faced Michael Madsen in classic cowboy garb, taking the measure of those around him. We've got commanding officers from both sides of the civil war, mysterious Mexicans and crotchety old racists, sharing stories and veiled threats. The whole scene is wonderfully tense, and brilliantly played. It's only a matter of time before someone gets horribly murdered, after all.
The whole experience of The Hateful Eight feels like a real night's entertainment. It's a callback in theme and in concept to a western serial, with an appropriately grand overture and even a narrators recap complete with a "When we last left our heroes..."
I'm glad that The Hateful Eight has come around, as it very nearly didn't happen at all. Tarantino is a constant in the otherwise sloppy world of contemporary film, and I don't want to miss a single one of his gritty, gruesome works of art.
