The Hateful Eight (2015)

☆ ☆ ☆

The Hateful Eight (2015) – Q. Tarantino

Here’s another example where “style” seems to dominate “substance” – and usually I don’t mind that.  However, Tarantino’s latest film overstays its welcome (even watching it in two sittings) and becomes a bit ponderous, rehashing his familiar mannerisms (talky colloquial script laced with profanity, sudden bloody violence, suspicion between characters with unknown loyalties, flashbacks to tell us what really happened) a bit too readily. On the plus side, the film must have looked spectacular in Ultra Panavision, projected in 70 mm on the widest possible screen; Tarantino’s compositions for this canvas are great, particularly those that capture panoramic Western vistas (of Telluride standing in as Wyoming).  Many familiar faces returned to the Tarantino fold for this one with the lion’s share of the plot falling to Samuel L. Jackson, a bounty hunter and former Union soldier (the film takes place just after the Civil War) and he is charismatic in his usual way, but subject to a lot of derogatory racial attacks.  Kurt Russell acquits himself well in John Wayne-mode as another tougher bounty hunter.  Jennifer Jason Leigh is Russell’s prisoner and she is given a rather one-note role, grunting and grimacing and receiving enough gratuitous physical violence to think that Tarantino himself must take pleasure in all the misogynistic (and racist) actions in his films.  Tim Roth and Michael Madsen also return, alongside Bruce Dern and a few other new faces.  All told, the film, despite its widescreen, seems strangely stagey, like a play transposed into Minnie’s Haberdashery, where most of the action takes place.  Perhaps eight central characters, all needing to be killed violently, was too many to handle.  Tarantino claims he will only make two more films, but perhaps that is two too many – he seems out-of-steam.