Film review: The Hateful Eight (18)

Quentin Tarantino’s stunning western is a character study of America with echoes of an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit.

The Hateful Eight (18) | Rating **** | Directed by Quentin Tarantino | Starring Samuel L Jackson, Walton Goggins, Kurt Russell, Tim Roth, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Demián Bichir, Bruce Dern, Michael Madsen

One of the fascinating things about Quentin Tarantino’s career in the 25 years since he shot Reservoir Dogs is the way he’s gradually become a much more politicised filmmaker. That he’s done so without succumbing to the obscurist tendencies of idols like Jean-Luc Godard (after whose 1964 film Bande à part Tarantino named his production company) or the self-conscious worthiness that has occasionally blighted other superstar auteurs (Steven Spielberg for one) is testament to his absolute confidence in his cinematic skills and cinematic tastes.

It’s the latter, however, that have sometimes blinded people to the underlying political import of his work. His unapologetic love of exploitation cinema can sometimes come across as pastiche or grotesquerie, and yet as much as he gleefully indulges those traits, he’s also appropriating the first-through-the-barrier boldness these kinds of films have when it comes to dealing with social issues in more interesting and subversive ways.

That’s certainly evident in new film The Hateful Eight, which continues his recent penchant for plundering history to explore racism in America. Like Django Unchained, it’s another western of sorts, one filled with eye-watering racial epithets, savage and brutal violence, dizzyingly constructed narrative turns and brilliantly outré performances. But it’s also a much more contained film, one that structurally harks back to Reservoir Dogs and unexpectedly riffs on Agatha Christie whodunnits in an almost perverse desire to subvert what’s expected from the genre and from Tarantino himself.

Those seeking out the much-trumpeted 70mm presentations for instance, will be treated to an overture and a built in “real time” intermission, all of which might suggest we’re in for some widescreen epic in which the landscape will be a character in and of itself, much as it was in John Ford westerns. Tarantino, however, isn’t particularly interested in complying with convention. Hence why much of the film takes place in a snowbound cabin that seems comically large thanks to his chosen shooting format. That’s the point however. Just as the hellfire climax of Inglourious Basterds showed how easily film imagery can be manipulated to serve a political end, his use of a style of filmmaking more commonly associated with mythologizing a period in American history that’s actually at the root of much of the racial strife that continues to plague the country is a subtly brilliant touch, one that further enhances his single location setting’s status as a microcosm of America in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War.

That setting is a shop that goes by the name of Minnie’s Haberdashery, an outpost in the wide-open Wyoming planes that becomes a refuge for the titular band of miscreants. If the title makes them sound like a villainous riff on The Magnificent Seven, that’s another Tarantino red herring. As becomes clear from the opening chapters, the Hateful Eight refers not to a band of bad-asses in cahoots with one another, but a rogue’s gallery of individuals with very few redeeming qualities brought together under one roof by fate and circumstance.

The first one we meet is Kurt Russell’s bounty hunter, John Ruth, a swaggering John Wayne type who’s transporting a cackling criminal by the name of Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the nearby town of Red Rock to be hanged. En route they pick up another bounty hunter, a black veteran of the Union army stranded in the snow. This is Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), whose claim to fame is that he was once pen-pals with Abraham Lincoln, something that impresses Ruth, if not Daisy. A fourth passenger arrives in the form of a good ol’ boy by the name of Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who claims he’s heading to Red Rock to assume his new position as the town sheriff.

As the blizzard worsens, they find themselves stranded at Minnie’s and are forced to share space with the dandyish local hangman (Tim Roth), a bitter Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a taciturn loner (Michael Madsen) and a Mexican who goes only by the name of Bob (Demián Bichir). All have ruthless, hateful qualities, and the ways in which they interact reveal deeper connections that shouldn’t be spoiled in a review. But it’s the way Tarantino has them interact that gives the film its cumulative power. His trademark dialogue is more elaborate and more subtly pointed here in its critique of America. And for all the violence on display, Tarantino’s continued ability to sustain tension with these extended passages of dialogue underscores how much more powerful and dangerous language can be, whether in the form of a racist slur, or a few soothing words designed to create the illusion of harmony in a divided country nowhere close to being healed.