“The Hateful Eight” is a great title in search a movie. Quentin Tarantino spends three hours looking for one without much success. But he has also committed an act of cinema that deserves to be acknowledged and applauded.
Tarantino is a genre dabbler whose style reflects the content of each film.
For his eighth film and his first western, he chose a style as big as all outdoors with 65mm lenses that haven’t been used since the 1960s and projecting in 70 mm Ultra Panavision at select theaters – the Marcus Majestic included – starting Dec. 25.
It is being presented in a road show format with an overture and an intermission. The widescreen, road show approach is in the tradition of epics like “Ben Hur” which offered audiences a spectacle they couldn’t get in their living room. As screens get smaller perhaps its time has come again.
Tarantino knows a thing or two about events and spectacle and attempts to mount one here.
The problem is the scenario he’s concocted doesn’t fill the frame. It’s schematic, filled with western movie archetypes and the dialogue – usually Tarantino’s specialty – is pedestrian. It’s told in two halves.
In the first a stagecoach bumps along a rutted road in a snowstorm. Its passengers are a bounty hunter with impressive facial hair played by Kurt Russell and his mewling feral prisoner and punching bag, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh. They are on the way to town so she can be hanged and he can claim his bounty.
They are diverted by; another bounty hunter played by Samuel L. Jackson stranded on the side of the road with a stack three dead men high; and a Confederate cracker, played by Walton Goggins, the new sheriff in that town, who is agin’ mixing with Jackson a former Union soldier considered war criminal in the South.
When they stop at a small outpost to wait out a storm, they encounter a suspicious quartet: cowpoke Michael Madsen, stablehand Demian Bichir, hangman Tim Roth, and Confederate general Bruce Dern.
In the second half, following intermission and catch-y0u-up narration by Tarantino, the newcomer’s backstories are revealed and everything ends in a bloody confrontation, choreographed by Jackson’s garrulous gunman. It ain’t a Tarantino film unless someone’s brains are blown out.
The story is basically a locked door mystery that unfolds in “Ten Little Indians” process of elimination fashion. And it takes place inside a one room building that isn’t all that visually interesting in widescreen.
But as the storm rages, cinematographer Robert Richardson fills the exteriors with a cruel beauty that feels faithful to the western film tradition. The result is a sight to behold but less than the sum of its parts.
Widescreen spectacle be hanged. A shorter version opens wide January 1.
*** Three stars
With Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, Bruce Dern, Zoe Bell.
Produced by Richard N. Gladstein, Shannon McIntosh, Stacy Sher.
Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino.
Approximate running time: 187 minutes. Rated R; violence, language, racial epithets, sexual content.
Tags: Kurt Russell, Marcus Majestic, Panavision, roadshow, Samuel L. Jackson, Tarantino, The Hateful Eight, widescreen Posted by