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The Hateful Eight - The Plate's Full...Great?

If you know me, you know I like movies a lot. I see a lot of them, good and bad. However, I'm also fairly lenient on my judgment for them. I prefer to take the good out of them, if I can, and leave the rest. I feel it's a great attitude to have with film. It takes anger out of the equation. It frees you from caring about sub-par performances or plot holes. However, when a film is made by an auteur, such as Tarantino, or if it has the full force of marketing behind it, I take everything into account. Hateful Eight was a very strong Tarantino movie. He steals good character types from the Western genre, he makes them all some wisecrackers, and he throws in perversion, ultraviolence, and long dialogues. This movie, if it was stripped down a bit, would make a strong contender to be damn near the top of my list of favorite westerns. It does a lot of things well. The actors are amazing in it, for their roles. It was a spectacular cast. The movie defines each person's perceived roles well. With the 70mm, you could also tell what the majority of the characters were doing at anytime, which is an amazing thing to have when the tensions rise. It sets the setting firmly in place, which is important in a western, as the locale is usually integral toward the plot. The design of Minnie's Haberdashery, where most of the film is shot, makes it feel like a well-defined, lived in space. Finally, the plot, which focuses on the motivations and actions of the characters, is a very well designed web that is not entirely clear, even up until the end. The problems that I have with it can all be traced to the over the top decisions that Tarantino litters his films with. They might not be a problem in other movies, but with Hateful Eight, they left a sour taste. The musical score has some great choices by bringing in one of the composers from the Spaghetti Westerns. Unfortunately, there was a pop song thrown in at a certain point. That yanked me away from a scene that was supposed to be giving you the feeling of Wyoming during a blizzard. It was a very odd choice, but it seems like a choice Tarantino would make, as I'm sure he was inspired by that song, and felt the need to put it in. There's a scene where there's unnecessarily lewd description of an awful event, with the bonus this time of a visual flashback that is just as perverse. There's heightened levels of theatrical gore that make it feel like a farce. If this was the only problem I had with the movie, I could easily forgive this, though. Then there's the problem that the version Tarantino wanted you to see, in gorgeous 70mm, is just too damn long. It is 3 hours! It has an intermission, which you need to take advantage of, because otherwise you'll go stir crazy! Without getting into specifics, he could easily have gotten the same point, and the same amount of information across in 2 hours and change. He took too long defining the characters, and he has simply added too much Tarantino bullshit to this movie, and he bogged it down. If this movie were a plate, there would be food spilling everywhere! That justifies that awful rhyme in the title, right? Now, it's quite possible that the non-70mm version does cut out a lot of this, but that's not my gripe. My gripe is that he wanted everyone to see THIS version. So, if you like Tarantino films, and love all of his stylistic choices for plot and film, then this will be the right film for you. You'll eat it up and ask for more, I'm sure. But even YOU, loyal Tarantino fan, will probably think it's too long. If, like me, you are sick and tired of the sick and tired efforts of Tarantino, I would suggest you say "The 8th Film by Quentin Taranti-No!" and only watch this if you feel you can stomach more of the same. Maybe rent the HD version later, skipping the monologue that ends the first half? That might save you a bit of a bad taste in your mouth. I was really hoping Tarantino had decided to just focus and make a good western... I guess I always knew he wouldn't. Oh well. What's my rating? A Quentin Tarantino out of 7. I just hopes this movie means we get more westerns... -Matt Waegelin

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