2/3 great, 1/3 blood-soaked Ten Little Indians

THE HATEFUL EIGHT (2015)

Reviewed by Jerry Saravia

"The Hateful Eight" represents some of the best and worst habits of Quentin Tarantino. On one hand, it has terrifically framed dialogue scenes inside a stagecoach and a Haberdashery where the characters expound on issues such as the Civil War, slavery and what it means to be black in America in the 1860's. On the other hand, the film can indulge forever in ways that would even make the late Sergio Leone (no stranger to overlong westerns - his "Once Upon a Time in the West" is exceedingly overlong but still a masterpiece) say, "how much longer are we going to be inside that Haberdashery?" It is that aspect of overlength and some grotesque violence that exceeds even my endurance test levels. Though not a complete success like Tarantino's other works, "The Hateful Eight" should hardly be dismissed either.

Tarantino's near 3-hour claustrophobic western has scraggy, scraggly hangman and bounty hunter named  John "The Hangman" Ruth  (Kurt Russell), his murderous criminal Daisy Domergue (black-eyed Jennifer Jason Leigh) whom he wants to hang at Red Rock, going to their destination in the snowy blizzard conditions of Wyoming inside a stagecoach. Along the hazardous journey, they pick up a bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) who is supposedly pen pals with Abraham Lincoln and carries around a personal letter from the 16th President (Warren is notorious for killing various Confederate soldiers during the war), and a new Sheriff of Red Rock named Mannix (Walter Goggins) who just happens to be wandering the area and is hardly the smartest Sheriff in town. Cut to Minnie's Haberdashery where they serve jelly beans, hot coffee and stewed potatoes. A newly-appointed Mexican employee (Demián Bichir) is taking over for Minnie in this one-room log cabin with one bed, while other people passing by are staying at this remote location. They include Tim Roth as a Christoph Walz-type hangman, Michael Madsen as Joe "Cow Puncher"  who is on his way to visit his mother for Christmas (!) and a former Confederate General (Bruce Dern) who is so racist that it becomes almost spooky. Good luck with Major Warren dealing with this nasty individual.

There is much to savor in "The Hateful Eight" and the tension builds on occasion, especially during a sequence where the coffee poisons almost everyone who drinks from it. There is also one sequence where Major Warren confronts the elderly Confederate General with a tale of how the Major tortured the General's son - it is done in flashback with Jackson's voice-over and is likely to make most viewers squirm and laugh nervously at the same time. That is the underlying beauty of Tarantino and why he rocks cinematically harder than any of his copycats with his pulp revenge tales - when forceful dialogue and dazzlingly powerful performances create a sustained mood of wickedness crossed with black humor in ways that can make audiences unsure of how to react. That is Tarantino's game, playing the audience like a piano. By the end of the gross-out extended climax, he is not playing the audience anymore - it is more like getting your fingers broken in agony while exploding heads, blown-off genitals and an offputting hanging grace the 70mm screen. You are left wallowing in excess gore which means the filmmaker is also left wallowing in it. The late Sam Peckinpah, no stranger in his heyday to stomach-churning, slow-motion ballets of violence, might have vomited while watching this grotesquerie. Ever since the cartoonish aesthetically over-the-top violence of his "Kill Bills," Tarantino has become the victim of what he was once criticized of being in the "Pulp Fiction" years - a director who really loves violence so much that it becomes dangerously close to being the subject of his movie. Let me be clear, the violence does not become the subject but it left a bitter taste in my mouth, almost but not too bitter.

In hindsight, the nasty, unendurable violence of the last third of the film do not take away from the primal power of "The Hateful Eight." It is Tarantino's ode to Agatha Christie's "Ten Little Indians" albeit with characters of excessively low moral repute. I will not soon forget Samuel L. Jackson's duplicitous nature or his discussions of racism in post-Civil War years (he may as well be talking about what is happening in America in the 2010 era); Jennifer Jason Leigh's savage blood-soaked smiles or her moment of grace when she plays the guitar; the shocked looks of Bruce Dern's Confederate General; Russell struggling to get a cup of coffee while handcuffed to Leigh; the entrance door to the Haberdashery that must be nailed shut each time it is opened and, of course, under the amazing lensing of cinematographer Robert Richardson ("Natural Born Killers," "Casino"), the few outdoor mountainous shots of Colorado standing in for Wyoming including an extended take of a Christ statue in crucifixion pose. There is plenty to admire about this western and I still love Tarantino as a demonically talented filmmaker who can still make smart, wickedly funny revenge tales. Yet "The Hateful Eight" is far too long in spots, far too bloody and a little too uneven. It is 2/3 a great film, and 1/3 a nauseatingly blood-soaked "Ten Little Indians."