The Hateful Eight (2015)

I previously mentioned my friend's interest in this movie. He had seen the first maybe half of it before. Now he would know that it wasn't all predictable from there.

In an 1877 Wyoming blizzard, former Union soldier Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) hitches a ride on the stagecoach of fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and John's captive, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), toward the nearest town to collect rewards. Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims to be the town's imminent sheriff, joins later. They and their driver, O.B. Jackson (James Parks), seek shelter at a haberdashery already occupied by Señor Bob (Demián Bichir), Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and former Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). Marquis smells something fishy, and John is sure that at least one man there plans to either help Daisy escape or claim the bounty himself.

You may have done the math and noticed more than eight characters. Well, O.B. doesn't seem very hateful, tho he does keep to himself a lot. Other characters, some hateful in their own right, turn up, primarily in flashbacks. Personally, I wouldn't have included the flashbacks, because they don't really tell us anything that Marquis doesn't figure out, and the shortest cut of the film is longer than necessary at 168 minutes. Also, director Quentin Tarantino should have omitted his narration -- or else done more of it, because its sparseness feels sloppy.

As the inclusion of Marquis and Sanford should tell you, the tension isn't all about the wanted woman. There's a lot of simmering resentment left over from the Civil War. Even several who were probably never Confederate aren't shy about throwing racial slurs, so get used to hearing the most of those in a Tarantino flick since Django Unchained if not Pulp Fiction. Good thing the dialogue is skilled enough to appeal to me anyway.

Given the bottled-up setting with not-so-bottled-up rage, plus the mystery element (something I can't recall ever seeing in a western before), I couldn't help thinking of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. That said, almost from the moment I saw a trailer, I figured the cast would be picking each other off, with a survival rate around that of Reservoir Dogs. Hey, they're pretty much all criminal or close enough.

If you want typical Tarantino violence, you've got it. Deaths and grievous injuries occur by multiple methods, often making a big mess. I was actually more disturbed by the physical abuse heaped on Daisy, who starts the picture with a black eye and only gets uglier from there. Sure, she's worth $10,000 dead or alive, but we never get the details of what she did to deserve it.

Fortunately, Tarantino takes inspiration from more than his past works. I detect a hint of The Great Silence, for one thing. Certainly some spaghetti western, or Ennio Morricone wouldn't provide the scoring. (The preexisting songs, by contrast, tend to be deliberately dissonant with whatever's happening.)

If not for my viewing company, I would have had a tougher time enjoying TH8. It pretty well encapsulates the best and worst of its auteur.