three hours of your life you will never get back

Rating: 4/10 (21 December 2015)

If you are among those once-discerning viewers who believe that everything QT does is wonderful because he is smart and clever and the rest of us so hobbled we can just barely appreciate his genius, then just hit the NOT USEFUL key and go on about your business. Don't bother with the rest of this review.
For those viewers who still have an ounce of common sense, my comments are:
1. Once again, QT makes an attempt to pay homage to the Italian westerns, using the camera angles and plot lines most associated with this unique genre of film that appeared in the 60s and disappeared in the 70s. Jackson plays the Lee Van Cleef character (and does a very poor job of it) and the rest of the cast, all major talents in their own right, do their best to keep up with the director's "vision" - but ultimately fail.
2. For the record, for the six or seven readers who are still with me, I watched all the original Italian westerns in that era. In theatres. Even the ones where the distribution companies could not afford to redub, and used subtitles. All of them. I loved them. I loved the way the tight camera angles and overdone sound effects would set you up for the scenes of explosive violence that followed. There was a unique "beat" or cadence to these films -- dialog, character development, slow stretches, explosive action, conflict development, more action, less dialog, less development, much more action, more action, ... and a final culmination.
3. QT, as with everything he does, believes he not only understands the inner workings of these films but can (heavy sigh) improve on them. He should google the term "hubris." And his many fans (too many) should re-read the story of the Emperors New Clothes.
4. This film turns the original formula -- which worked -- into an overlong stage play full of hackneyed dialog that doesn't work at all. Some of the best talents in this business are wasted because they are compelled by the script and the director to deliver performances which they instinctively realize are atonal. There is no viewer engagement. There is no audience connection. I feel especially sorry for viewers who never saw the originals and came to the theatre believing, based on the sycophantic reviewers, that they are watching something wonderful and amazing. Like the opera-goers who fall asleep during the performance, and afterwards pretend it was a treat.
I wonder if viewers of the future will look back at the QT phenomenon and wonder what the heck we were smoking?