a movie with no reason for being

Rating: 7/10 (23 December 2015)

I'm a very big fan of Tarantino's earlier work. I thought Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown were, in their way, important movies. He was saying something very relevant to the world of cinema about the difference between movie violence and real violence, especially in the nineties on the heels of the action craze of the eighties.
Indirectly he was saying that we romanticize these types of events and people, but really they're just a bunch of normal guys who tell stupid jokes, talk about nothing, and screw up their job, which are despicable. The hit men in Pulp Fiction aren't superhuman killing machines - they're two jerkoffs who get paid to kill people; sometimes they're cool, and sometimes they're stupid, just like regular guys.
But starting with Kill Bill, it felt like Tarantino had begun to run out of things to say. Those two movies, which would have been one good movie if anyone had the balls to edit him, were really just about themselves. It was more of a series of compelling scenes than it was a single coherent story. But there was a voice in there, and there were things being said.
This movie is the ultimate expression of that trend. It has no reason for existing, other than itself. The story isn't compelling or new, and there's no new angle on it that makes you see things in a different way. The dialogue comes across as extremely self-aware and fake, even for a Tarantino film.
Even some of the visuals seem poorly executed and the tone is a little choppy. For example, early in the movie he's apparently trying to create a sense of claustrophobia by cutting between the outside of the wagon, with the tiny shelter of the wagon contrasted with the brutal, all-encompassing blizzard, and the conversation on the inside. But the conversation is kind of ridiculous, and the framing makes it seem almost comical, which completely undercuts the tone that it seems like he's trying to set.
Even if it weren't a pointless movie, it would be far from his best work. But when you take the relatively minor flaws in the structure of the film, and combine them with the fact that the movie has nothing to say, you end up asking yourself why he bothered to make it, and why you bothered to watch it.