A well made, but hard to defend film

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2016)

The Hateful Eight is such a strange film as far as "ratings" go. Most movies, I have a pretty good idea on whether it was a good film or not. The Hateful Eight is... between a 4/10-8/10... yeah... the movie is either bad or pretty good. This film is such an odd-flick because rarely has a movie captivated me so well, but then had little to no pay-off for that captivation. Yeah, the cinematography is gorgeous, the aspect ratio was neat, the dialogue is smart and witty, but... in the end... there isn't a whole lot to this movie.
Now, to review this movie it should be fair to also bring in references of Tarantino's other films. You know in Inglorious Basterds where the spies are drinking at a bar full of Germans? Where the characters are all vaguely trying to figure out who is who and the tension just slowly builds? That is this movie. Yes. The Hateful Eight in its entirety can pretty much be summed up by that one scene in Inglorious Basterds. And this makes sense, because he also did the same thing with Django Unchained where the second half of the movie is mostly just dialogue and building tension with dialogue, so why wouldn't Tarantino just make an entire film about ensemble dialogue?
This is both smart and annoying at the same time. While The Hateful Eight can be praised for how smartly made it is, it can also be criticized for how pointless it is and how the movie doesn't do much with what it has. You see, The Hateful Eight is a "Who did it" movie, along the lines of Reservoir Dogs or The Thing. Now, for a "Who did it" movie to really work, there needs to be more than just "one" mystery. For the most part, you need a series of mysteries that lead the audience to the culprit. There need to be multiple elements that throw the audience off. And while this movie has multiple "suspects" to throw the audience off, the entire plot revolves around only one mysterious plot-point and not multiple mysteries.
For me, this is a little frustrating because the audience can't really solve a mystery with only one point. They need multiple points. So any attempt to solve the mystery doesn't really work because you are never given enough information to solve it. The other issue is *MASSIVE SPOILERS* that EVERYONE is the culprit in this movie. Granted, that is a slight exaggeration (three of the main characters aren't, but out of 8-11 different characters that isn't much). So, essentially the audience could've guessed anyone and they would've been right. And that is a big problem with a movie that plays itself like a mystery. There is no pay-off for paying close attention to the movie. You could shoot blindly in the dark and you would get the correct answer on "who is behind this".
Overall, that is probably my biggest gripe with the movie. The movie is long and is careful to give the audience tid-bits of information on the characters, which you think will help out later on, but they don't. Nothing that happens in the movie really helps the audience figure out the mystery or even guide them in the right direction, and unfortunately, that is one of the most important elements of the movie to get right.
However, the movie is clever with how its characters work. Every character in the movie (Whether you like them or not) is evil. The main character (played by Samuel L Jackson) is very interesting because he is a liar. If you believe his stories, he is one of the most evil psychopaths in the movie. If you think he is always lying, he is actually a pretty smart character who is mostly doing the right thing. This goes with all of the characters. Every character is both likable and down-right evil.
Did the infamous run-time of this film really bother me? Not really. While it is a long film, it is also continuously engaging and interesting. Unfortunately it never really pays off, but it was still fun to watch... up to a certain point. A tiny nit-pick would be that there are random narrations in the film. They are supposed to be cheesy, but they are unnecessary because they describe what is going on screen. If the narrations described events we didn't see, it would make sense, but they don't... they simply describe what is happening.
The last gripe on The Hateful Eight is that this is the most psychotic and pointlessly gruesome of Tarantino films. Other Tarantino films will have stylized violence, goofy violence, or so much blood that it is unrealistic and looks more like a joke (Django Unchained, Kill Bill); however, this film isn't light-hearted or very jokesy with its violence. It is just down-right disturbing at times. This kind of works to the effect of the film, but it gets a little over-the-top at times... I feel like it tries to be funny with its violence at times, but it just comes across as sick (but again, that is kind of the point of the film).
All in all, The Hateful Eight is a technically well made film and it is an interesting film. While I did enjoy the first half a lot, the second half was kind of a let-down. What should've been a tightly woven mystery ends up being a dark, cartoony, gore fest to constantly trick the audience's expectations of who is the most evil. I could see some people hating this film and some people loving this film. I don't even know my true feelings of the film. On one end, it is technically amazing. On the other end, its pay-off isn't so good.
Make what you want of it. Be warned, it isn't for everyone.