There won't be many coming home

Rating: 7/10 (22 January 2017)

Now, yours truly is and probably forever will remain a devoted Quentin Tarantino fan-boy. I'm a huge admirer of everything this man has done so far and I also honestly think that he's one of the very few filmmakers out there who has developed his very own, unique and inimitable style. Even if it wouldn't be hyped and anticipated months from beforehand all over the internet, you'd still be able to recognize QT's newest movie straight away. Why? Because there simply isn't another director who writes dialogues like he does. There isn't a single other director who provides a soundtrack so suitable for his/her films. There aren't any other directors that find the exact right balance between visual style, atmosphere, dialogues, humor and excessive violence. There are very few directors that somehow bring out the best possible performances from their entire ensemble casts, etc.
Still, it sometimes seems as if Tarantino's formerly worshiped trademarks are now turning against him. I have the impression that I read more and more hate-reviews every time he releases a new film, and all things that people used to love unanimously – like the dialogues – now seem to upset and irritate them. It's not because I'm a big QT fan that I'm not skeptical and, yes, admittedly even I would have preferred that "The Hateful Eight" was less talkative and at least 30-45 minutes shorter in running time. The film is great in terms of atmosphere, setting, character development and camera-work, but nearly two and a half hour of (primarily irrelevant) drivel and balderdash before anything exciting happens is a little bit too exaggerated; even for a master like Tarantino. And another point of criticism, personally I really missed the all-overpowering "WOW"-sentiment, and that actually already was the case in "Django Unchained" as well. All of Tarantino's older movies, up until "Inglorious Bastards", were also astounding in terms of originality and imaginative plotting. "The Hateful Eight" is basically a very simplistic tale, a sort of whodunit in a stone-cold and unpleasant western environment. In spite of all of Sam Jackson's long monologues and Tim Roth's brilliant Hangman speech, the essence of the plot lies within the question "who poisoned the coffee?"
"The Hateful Eight" contains almost too many highlights to list, and that's the most important conclusion of my viewing. The long and moody opening sequence, slowly turning around the deformed Christ statue, is pure art! In fact, the cinematography throughout the entire film is brilliant and chock-full of ingenious angles; outside in the excruciatingly cold Wyoming winter as well inside in the haberdashery. I think I covered the greatness of the dialogues already, and the violence featuring in the last half hour is also stupendous, with heads getting blown clean off and scumbags puking out all the blood in their bodies. In another interview I read that Tarantino listed two movies as his main inspiration, namely his own "Reservoir Dogs" and John Carpenter's "The Thing". Those two are indeed well represented, but I would definitely add one other title, and I'm sure QT knows I'm right, and that's the obscure but raw and excessively violent Spanish/Italian western "Cut-Throats Nine". The original soundtrack by Ennio Morricone sent cold shivers down my spine, but there's another song on the soundtrack that even made me happier. All my life I've been a fan of Roy Orbison, but thanks to Tarantino's "The Hateful Eight" I discovered a magnificent song of his that I never heard before. "I won't be many coming home" is a fantastic song and ideally fits the tone and content of the film.