Genre Grandeur – The Hateful Eight (2015) – Moody Moppet

For this month’s next review for Genre Grandeur – Western Crossover Movies, here’s a review of The Hateful Eight (2015) – by Reut of Moody Moppet

Thanks again to Kira of Film and TV 101  for choosing this month’s genre.

Next month’s Genre has been chosen by Ashleigh of The Movie Oracle and it is Spoof/Parody Movies.

Please get me your submissions by the 25th of November by sending them to spoofashleigh@movierob.net

Try to think out of the box! Great choice Ashleigh!

Let’s see what Reut thought of this movie:

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The Hateful Eight (2015) – Movie Rob’s Genre Grandeur

Howdy, partners!

First off, thanks to Movie Rob and Kira of Film and TV 101 for choosing this great Western Crossover genre. I happily chose an all-time-favorite of mine, a nice little delicacy called The Hateful Eight, directed by Quentin Tarantino. But I guess you knew that already.

So, hope you enjoy my entry.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

Dirty scoundrels, vile blood-sheds, quick-on-trigger dialogues, pitch-black humor, and a mouth-drooling pot of stew. What’s not to love about Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight?

Starring almost every one of his core ensemble excluding Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern and Channing Tatum, Tarantino’d smart-mouthed Western-like movie does a lot of justice to the genre. It’s artful, painfully profane, mysterious and superbly entertaining.

There’s a Wholotta suspicious eye-balling and battle of egos when a bunch of heinous renegades meet in an old haberdashery in the midst of a Wyoming winter, all heading to the town of Red Rock. Bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his coach driver O.B (James Parks) escort treacherous prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to Red Rock to be properly hanged, because “You only need to hang mean bastards, but Mean Bastards, you-need-to-hang!” Their coach is stopped by one Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), another infamous bounty hunter with a list of war atrocities under his name, who’s in possession of a personal and enviable letter from Abraham Lincoln. The four soon encounter Red Rock’s new sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a former outlaw and quite the wise ass. Arriving at Minnie’s haberdashery, a stagecoach lodge in the middle of nowhere, the four fellas and black-eyed lady are greeted by an ambiguous Mexican guy named Bob (Demian Bichir) that claims he’s left in charge while Minnie and her hubby Sweet Dave are away visiting her mother. Inside are three other lodgers; A pompous English hangman named Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), a withdrawn cowboy named Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and a former Confederate general named Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern). And the rest is history when it comes to who will eventually make it to Red Rock after all.

The Hateful Eight is a full-on Tarantino movie. Liking it or not really depends on whether or not you’re a fan. I’m definitely a FAN. After his Django Unchained, this versatile director pays a brilliant homage to spaghetti-Western’s once again and makes the great, but obviously, when it comes to critical acclaims, opinions are always so sharply divided.

The movie’s perfect when it comes to proper post Civil War setting, lingo and costumes and the cast is royally fun. I love John “The Hangman” Ruth and Kurt Russell has always been one of my favorite actors in-the-whole-world!!! Tim Roth, I adore, Samuel L. Jackson is a king, and Bruce Dern has won me over with The ‘Burbs.

Can we talk about Jennifer Jason Leigh’s Oscar-nominating role as Daisy? “Whoa whoa whoa!” I seriously think NO OTHER WOMAN could’ve executed murderous Domergue better than her and she’s such a fine addition to an all-male cast.

Daisy Domergue’s got nothing to lose. She’s a nasty outlaw bitch with a $10,000 bounty on her head and she doesn’t seem to give a hoot about being hanged at all, apart from one moment in the coach when you notice the fear in her eyes, remorse, even. Her huge monologue is in the last scene while in the rest of the movie she remains fairly quiet apart from occasional smirks and foul comments which get her smacked by Russell quite often.

Her song and dance with “The Hangman” being handcuffed to each other are intriguing as there are glints of mutual understanding between the two, kind of captor-captive relationship, while simultaneously there’s beating, cursing and laughing at this supposed weaker link, although not weak at all.

In cahoots!

love this phrase.

The movie length is totally forgiven, 167 minutes, seeing as every scene is packed with tension build-up towards the final one, which on its own, is gore-soaked.

Tarantino’s repetitive movie elements

Just like on his other motion pictures, The Hateful Eight is built around a structure of chapters, including a prologue and an epilogue, starting with Chapter One: Last Stage to Red Rock. 

Tarantino has a tendency to start slow and spiral up into an explosion. In this case, it’s a full-explosion, a disgraceful western carnage of brains and faces splattering on the wooden cabin floor. And viewers aren’t spared with details at all.

Tarantino is a master at crafting razor-sharp and witty dialogues. All spoken words are very explicit and there’s usually no room for mistakes. What needs to be done is simply asked for very accurately by each character and that’s how we get to know ’em better.

This Tarantino’s testosterone-fueled movie also inhabits features of subversive masculinity which we also witnessed in Pulp Fiction – “Zed’s dead, baby. Zed’s dead“. I won’t spoil, god forbid, but that scene shook me up a bit.

Red Apples, anyone?

 

 

Overall, The Hateful Eight is a Western masterpiece that I would definitely watch again for the third time. I enjoy Western films in general, but this one just scaled-up to the top of my list.