(Part One of an ongoing series of film criticism, showing what’s good and what’s bad in the movies of the last 20 to 30 years.)
Can we just all take a moment and bemoan the end of a once-brilliant cinematic era? One man and one movie, in particular, may have been responsible for bringing about such an end; that man is Quentin Tarantino, and the movie is "The Hateful Eight," a horrific form of punishment I subjected myself to when my college roommate brought the DVD home for us to watch.
I never thought I'd see the day where I would stand up and say that I hated a Tarantino film. For the love of all that is holy, three hours of monotonous dialogue and over-the-top violence, notable actors who give nearly embarrassing performances, and Samuel L. Jackson delivering an awkward monologue detailing how he raped and tortured a Confederate general's grandson all serve to almost push me over the edge.
Quentin Tarantino can no longer be considered one of my all-time favorite directors, due in part to the fact that the freshness of his dialogue has started lagging with respect to his last few films. What had worked so perfectly when he was making crime movies ("Reservoir Dogs," "Pulp Fiction," "Jackie Brown") doesn't quite mesh with western or WW2 movies, where none of the pop culture dissections can come through in order to enact relevance and humor. Not to mention the violence, profanity and utter ridiculousness have all been handled more masterfully in the capable hands of better filmmakers, such as Martin Scorsese ("Taxi Driver," "Goodfellas"), Tarantino’s quasi-artful offerings don’t quite compare.
There was not one redeeming character in this film—and that could have worked, but Tarantino was just not up to the challenge here. Bruce Dern plays a cartoonishly racist Confederate general, and Tim Roth is only in the film to serve what I guess was to be the Christoph Waltz position of being devilishly charming (which didn’t work, of course). Having nobody with whom I could connect, I walked away not only disinterested but also quite angry.
Hot off the heels of "Django Unchained" and containing more of the same racial tension as its predecessor, "The Hateful Eight" also further cements a continuing lack of usable arguments I could give in favor of the race duff brought up by a man who tries to appropriate black culture and discussions for his own gain. With "Jackie Brown"'s celebration of Blaxploitation films and the resurgence of Pam Grier's career I could more easily defend the use of racialized moments within the context of the story and characters involved. By the time we get to "Django Unchained" and its spiritual sequel, however, the defense has lost the will to live. Not to mention the fact that Major Marquis Warren’s (Samuel L. Jackson's character—also known as “The Bounty Hunter”) monologue involving torture and rape, including graphic flashbacks to the incident, made me feel sick to my stomach. While I would never argue for censorship on First Amendment grounds, I still maintain that for rape to be brought into the discussion of any work of art is a hard sell. Tarantino's use of forcible assault on another man to make a point on black vengeance against whites and to use an unreliable narration served no good purpose. In an essence he’s playing into the stereotype that black men in American are nothing more than violent aggressors—he’s putty in the hands of those most racist of people who would hope to discredit him.
Which brings us to another problem with this film: unlike "Jackie Brown" and "Kill Bill," this movie does not have a strong female character. Daisy Domergue, Jennifer Jason Leigh’s character and the woman being brought through the wilderness to be hung, is the least developed of the entire cast of horrific caricatures. She is constantly made the subject of everyone's ridicule and abuse. Which would have been fine if she had been allowed to shine like the rest and show some useful backstory, a redemption story, or something—instead she continues hurling racist remarks to Major Warren and groveling when she is close to being killed off at the end. The racist Sheriff Chris Mannix (played by Walton Coggins) and Major Warren are the last leading men left alive by the time they showdown with the “prisoner” (the name by which she is mostly known); when they decide to kill her, they gloat and say that to merely shoot her would not be enough. No, they have to hang her, thereby destroying her as an act of retaliation for finally standing up to them as the leader of her criminal gang. Warren even praises the “hangman” John Ruth (played by Kurt Russell in a poor John Wayne imitation), a man who had brought the woman in for the bounty and who has been dead for at least a third of the movie now, for not simply shooting her (which would have been too easy a fate for her, in the eyes of these men).
The verdict is simple folks, this film is bringing troubling sexist undertones within Tarantino's films and stripping them of any redeeming value. This movie is wholly unsettling, and I cannot recommend it in good conscience.
At the end of the day, once the novelty of Tarantino's dialogue wears off—and to be honest the dialogue in this film sucked—we are left only with a hodgepodge of misused gimmicks, bloodshed that loses its edge quickly, and finally, a disgruntled movie buff who wishes he could have re-watched the original "Django" with Franco Nero instead. The machine broke down, and I couldn't think of anything to put the pieces back together again.
Honestly guys, I hated this movie. Three hours of my life I'll never get back, but this is just the beginning of my complaints. Could I go on—moreover, should I go on—with the big screen, given this act of betrayal at the hands of one of the most recent and highly regarded practitioners? Maybe there is no line to be crossed anymore, and I just care too much.
(To be continued next time gang.)
