{"id":38257,"date":"2016-01-04T10:35:35","date_gmt":"2016-01-04T15:35:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/?p=38257"},"modified":"2016-01-04T10:35:35","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T15:35:35","slug":"the-hateful-eight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/2016\/01\/the-hateful-eight\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cThe Hateful Eight\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The good news about \u201cThe Hateful Eight\u201d is that I, a huge fan of director Quentin Tarantino, think he\u2019s done it again. And everybody at my had-to-have-been-sold-out screening on Christmas Eve seemed to be in agreement. But many critics aren\u2019t happy with the film and audiences overall aren\u2019t responding as well as I\u2019d like. It barely scraped together enough for a third place finish in its first weekend of nationwide release. People are missing out on this movie, and it\u2019s a shame because it\u2019s as good as any Tarantino project from the last decade and quite possibly the best film of 2015.<\/p>\n

The film takes place during a blizzard in post-Civil War Wyoming. The story opens with stranded bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) hitching a ride in the stagecoach of fellow bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell). Ruth is transporting gang member Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to be hanged, making him one of the few bounty hunters to opt for the \u201cAlive\u201d portion of \u201cDead or Alive.\u201d Along the way they also pick up the stranded Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a Confederate holdout who doesn\u2019t care much for Warren.<\/p>\n

The foursome and their hapless driver (James Parks) arrive at a lodge where they meet four more strangers. Bob (Demian Bichir) is a Mexican in temporary charge of the unflinchingly anti-Mexican establishment. Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) is the dapper local hangman who will likely be performing his duties on Daisy. Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) is a cowboy and\u2026 that\u2019s about all he\u2019ll tell about himself. General Sanford Smithers (Bruce Dern) is a retired Confederate leader who doesn\u2019t care much for Warren at first and cares for him even less after Warren tells him about an icy encounter he had with his missing son. There\u2019s a lot of tension in the room: racial, political, territorial, legal, moral, monetary, and personal. It\u2019s only a matter of time before things turn violent. And then it turns out that some of the violence might be occurring for yet another reason: loyalty.<\/p>\n

The plot, admittedly, is the film\u2019s weakest point. Tarantino has a tendency to sabotage his movies by filling them with complicated schemes that are not only unnecessary, but foolish. A lot of blood could have gone unspilled in \u201cDjango Unchained\u201d if Django and King Schultz had just offered to buy the slave they wanted instead of hatching a baffling plan to get her thrown in with a Mandingo fighter they weren\u2019t serious about buying. And there\u2019s no reason why the villain(s) in this movie couldn\u2019t dispatch their enemies accurately and efficiently in under a minute, except that it wouldn\u2019t allow time for mind games between the characters. But oh how those mind games more than redeem this movie.<\/p>\n

The best thing about \u201cThe Hateful Eight,\u201d as with all Quentin Tarantino movies, is the dialogue. Man\u2019s inhumanity to Man has never been so savory, not even when it\u2019s happening to a woman (and it does, a lot). Also worthy of praise is the acting, again done best when the characters are being inhumane or better yet, hateful. Even with the film attracting detractors, Jennifer Jason Leigh is high in the running for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar. I could also see Supporting Actor nominations for Samuel L. Jackson (which would be his first nomination since Tarantino\u2019s \u201cPulp Fiction\u201d over twenty years ago) and Walton Goggins (finally getting a decent movie role that complements his years of brilliant, unrecognized television work).<\/p>\n

This is not a movie for everybody. Viewers who abhor gunplay, bloodshed, foul language, racial epithets, violence against women, and many other types of meanness are going to hate this movie. But if you\u2019ve enjoyed Quentin Tarantino movies in the past, or are truly ready to throw yourself into one now, this is an excellent way to spend three hours.<\/p>\n

Three and a Half Stars out of Five.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hateful Eight\u201d is rated R for strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity. Its running time is 187 minutes.<\/p>\n

Contact Robert Garver at rrg251@nyu.edu<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bob Garver \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The good news about \u201cThe Hateful Eight\u201d is that I, a huge fan of director Quentin Tarantino, think he\u2019s done it again. And everybody at my… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38257\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelehighacresgazette.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}