The Hateful Eight suffers from an overly long running time, comparably forgettable characters and the weight of expectation, but it eventually comes to life,

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2016)

It's easy to determine the worst film of Tarantino's career, it's Death Proof. That one's firmly at the bottom of the totem pole. Some way up to around the middle of the pole are both volumes of Kill Bill, which had fun action but were utterly lightweight. Deciding which film occupies the top of the monument is quite difficult, as I like Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained for a variety of different reasons. These four films are a showcase of the wit, cine-literacy, explosive conflict and idiosyncrasies that have made Tarantino perhaps the most popular director of the past twenty years.
On the surface, The Hateful Eight has the earmarks of a Tarantino film. It has dialogue in abundance, squibby gunfights, incessant use of the word n*gger and a hollering Samuel L. Jackson, but Quentin Tarantino's eighth film is a decidedly mediocre entry into his much loved oeuvres.
The immediate problem is pacing. Unlike some, I seldom found the pacing of Inglourious Basterds or Django Unchained to be a problem, but The Hateful Eight, which has been politely labelled a slow burner by some critics, burns too slowly. It takes a whole half hour of gruff, uneventful drawl before we reach Minnie's Haberdashery, in which the remainder of the film's 187 minutes takes place.
Once we're in the cabin, the aggressively cautious John Ruth (Kurt Russell) demands the identity of everyone. There's Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson), a bounty hunter who is fine but doesn't depart from familiar Sam Jackson territory; Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), the goofy, ebullient Sheriff of nearby Redrock; Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), Ruth's foul-mouthed bounty who's on the receiving end of multiple elbows and fists; Oswaldo Mobrey (Tim Roth), a stereotypical Victorian gentleman and hangman; Bob (Demian Bichir), a mumbling Mexican; General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), a cantankerous bastard who fought in the Civil War and Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), a completely disposable stock character.
It is unlikely that any of these characters will leave much of an impression on the viewer, they are Tarantino's most unremarkable and thinly drawn in quite some time. You will not find another Vincent Vega, Jules Winnfield or Colonel Hans Landa here. One would think that a film with this title would have eight very unpleasant characters, and I suppose it does, but I didn't hate them because I didn't care. There is a flashback scene in which they are genuinely hateful, but its placement towards the end of the three hour running time blunted its power, all of the narrative baggage that preceded it was distracting and dispiriting.
Like he did in Kill Bill vol. 1, Tarantino could've made up for the weak characters with some great set pieces. His career has been punctuated with long scenes of iconic humour and dialogue as well as biting tension, suspense and unpredictability. These elements are sometimes present within the cramped four walls of Minnie's Haberdashery, especially when the mystery begins to unravel. Compare this to Inglourious Basterds, however, and you'll be swiftly reminded that The Hateful Eight lacks the energy, excitement and intrigue that we expect. There's nothing that matches the opening interrogation between Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and the French farmer or Michael Fassbender's excruciating altercation in the basement bar.
Perhaps most damaging of all is that the dialogue and humour also suffers by comparison. There's no golden watch sequence, no 'I just shot Marvin in the face' moment. There's nothing that approaches the loquacious flair of Reservoir Dogs and particularly Pulp Fiction. The Hateful Eight's most memorable set piece is an ill-judged exchange between Samuel Jackson and Bruce Dern, in which there is a cutaway scene featuring fellatio. It's crude, unimaginative and below the standard of a two- time Oscar winner for best original screenplay.
All of this would have been avoided if Tarantino had just given the screenplay to Tracy Letts, who wrote the wonderfully twisted Killer Joe. Letts is a Pulizer prize-winning playwright who knows how to ignite all manner of drama within a cramped domestic setting; he also knows how to write an outrageous scene of fellatio. Letts would have stripped it down and added a bit of spice, or probably a whole ghost chili, knowing him.
The tone of this review has been largely negative, but I didn't hate or even dislike the film. The Hateful Eight is just something of a misfire, a weak ending to Quentin's so- called historical trilogy. It suffers from a slow start, but the crescendo that builds following the interval reaches a climax that lifts the film up, albeit not to the height of his previous efforts.
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