Hate Ain’t Great
Quentin Tarantino’s Western comedy lacks laughs — and excitement
APURLOINED script, leaked on the Internet, which led to a furious Quentin Tarantino temporarily abandoning the project. A threat of a boycott after the director branded cops as killers. And rolling the film out in a limited “roadshow” release in the long-obsolete 70mm film format, complete with overture and intermission.
Tarantino’s latest and least, the comic Western “The Hateful Eight,” is far less entertaining or interesting than its years-long buildup, which has been even longer and more annoying than the one for “Star Wars: The Force Awakens.”
All this hype, and for what? Three hours or so — the general-release version opening Dec. 31 runs a mere 167 minutes, without an intermission — set mostly in a single room at a shop where the unsavory guests and staff trade juvenile and racist insults, periodically murdering each other. I was hoping they’d get it over with already well before the intermission.
There are far too many gratuitous shots of a blizzard raging in the Wyoming landscape as a stagecoach heads for Red Rock, where bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) plans to collect a reward for turning over fugitive murderer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh).
Along the way they pick up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a notorious bounty hunter who’s a former slave and Union officer; and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Confederate veteran who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.
At a stagecoach stopover, they meet up with the other half of the titular octet: Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), who introduces himself as the hangman of Red Rock; laconic cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen); aged ex-Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern); and Bob (Demián Bichir), who explains he’s watching the place in the owner’s absence.
It’s not exactly surprising that virtually no one is telling the truth in their long speeches, which are far from Tarantino’s best. That possibly includes Marquis, who boasts that he sexually abused the general’s son, an act depicted in a graphic flashback; and Chris, who asserts that Marquis locked soldiers in a burning church (mercifully not shown).
When he isn’t beating up Daisy — the film’s least appealing running gag — John is repeating his suspicions that one or more of the others is plotting her rescue. A subplot involving poisoned coffee demonstrates that Tarantino is no threat to Agatha Christie.
The f ilmmaker further pulls the rug out from under the audience with a flashback sequence he personally narrates, introducing another set of briefly seen characters. The most prominent is played by Channing Tatum, who hams it up as badly as everybody else.
“The Hateful Eight” is basically an expensive vanity project allowing Tarantino to expound on his bizarre theories about race relations.
Kurt Russell (from left), Jennifer Jason Leigh and Bruce Dern are three of the titular characters of “The Hateful Eight.”