Over-indulgent and Look Ma No Hands!

Rating: 2/10 (2 February 2016)

The Hateful Eight is a ponderous "watching paint drying" kind of a movie where the characters keep yapping and nothing seems to happen. Where the visual of screenplay writing is thrown out of the carriage window and scenes and events are narrated through dialogs - you don't get to see events happen as you would in a movie. The only moments you feel you are watching a movie are the gratuitous snowy wide shots on panavision. Or else it feels like you are watching a play... His worst movie - It's like QT's Waterloo, or in movie terms it is his "Howard the Duck" - an eternal nudge-nudge wink-wink of the kitschy mind... Tarantino is over-indulgent, trying to draw constant attention to supposed smart lines and the actors all play out shadows of their own characters from earlier QT movies. He has always relied on brilliant snappy smart dialogs and set pieces - but has always balanced it with action/events/plots - here it seems the dialogue writer erased the screenplay. QT is constantly trying to grab your attention with supposedly smart lines - it feels like the kid who says Look Ma No Hands! And predictably like the kid, this movie too falls on its face! Only from Chapter 4 does the movie become interesting (which is at approx 100 minutes RT) Any slower and this movie would be a Terence Malik or a Mrinal Sen art-house film! It seems like the movie has been made by a wannabe fan-boy trying to be QT with its nudge nudge wink wink moments. It's as if the director has gone through a check-list of his trademark ingredients - Blood and Gore - yes in plenty; Smart lines - yes; surprise cameos - yes; shocks - yes; Favorite characters dying - yes... But it does not come together like it did in Pulp Fiction or in Jackie Browne or Reservoir Dogs. Brilliant Performances by Sam Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Kurt Russell. Brilliant cameo by Tim Roth (as always) and the roles played by Michael Madsen and Channing Tatum could have been played by any A-Grade junior artist at the price of a double shift. It is an attempt to make it a Western version of Reservoir Dogs - but this one does not even wag its tail! The funny thing is sycophantic critics are waxing eloquent about how it takes us back to Sergio Leone and tribute to westerns and blah blah - THOSE movies had stories. Period. A horse carriage, a haberdashery,some snow and a few shootouts DO NOT make a western or a movie! It's like watching a play shot on film!