THE HATEFUL EIGHT MOVIE REVIEW

The Hateful Eight is the eighth film from director Quentin Tarantino, which he proudly proclaims when it begins. The first twenty minutes doesn’t prepare you for what is to come. There are myriad twists to the plot, none of them apparent. But there are clues strewn like bread crumbs, and this is Agatha Christie meets Sergio Leone, only in typical Tarantino style. The film has a beating black heart like all of Tarantino’s pictures, and the dialogue is verbose like fans of Pulp Fiction and Inglourious Basterds will tell you. You know you will have to keep guessing, but nothing prepares you for what is to come.

This is a western, where the comedy is macabre. And violence is raw, another Tarantino trait, which refuses to go away. Fans of From Dusk Till Dawn, for which Tarantino wrote the screenplay, will be aware of the sheer delight the director takes in inverting the familiar traits of the genre. In this movie, the western becomes a whodunit, which sends your pulse racing.

Tarantino takes head on the questions of race and gender. The sole woman in the movie has a mysterious identity. The climatic sequence is filled with this subtext and when the crisis is resolved, as it should, the questions raised still seem to have an air of authenticity. Jennifer Jason Leigh, in an Oscar nominated role, delivers a smouldering hot performance.

Samuel Jackson is in Jackie Brown, a lesser flamboyant work from video store clerk turned director. His is in a chunkier role here and till his comeuppance is the movie’s pivot. The whole of the movie is set in one day, and Tarantino stresses on this, when Lincoln was president. A letter written by the president, who oversaw the end of the American civil war, features prominently in the movie, and a parallel can be drawn to the watch in Pulp Fiction, which indirectly causes Bruce Willis’ shocking death in the middle of that movie.

Other regulars from Tarantino movies are here. Tim Roth, the man holding up the restaurant in Pulp Fiction, and Michael Madsen, the blonde in Reservoir Dogs, are here. There are moments in the movie, when Ennio Morricone’s score brilliantly references the previous movies the Oscar winner has worked in. But large tracts are silent and the howling wind outside Minnie’s Haberdashery is often the only thing you can hear. At other points, the music is loud and attention-seeking, and with Tarantino’s sense of irony, one can never tell what the music illustrates. For instance, the score soars when two characters are laying a path supported by rope from the inn to the stable. Now with the Oscar nominations out, it is certain that the Academy was right to give Morricone a nod.

Kurt Russell is another Tarantino favourite, who makes a spectacular turn in the movie as a bounty hunter. Acting throughout the movie is brilliant and dialogue delivery is as good as it gets.

Robert Richardson’s camera is superb as it captures the Wild West. There is a close-up shot of a white horse and a black horse running together and this is captured so lovingly that you would very much like to tip your hat to this master craftsman and artist.

Also, there is a bit of complication thrown into the screenplay. The movie is in four chapters, when its usually a three-act movie audiences are used to watch. The last chapter, of course, is the least predictable.