I finally got around being able to watch “The Hateful Eight” in September of 2016. Took me a bit longer to write a review afterwards.

At any rate - this review is of considerable length, so I have split it up into “The Good” and “The Bad” parts respectively (no ugly parts, these may be found integrated into “The Bad” subsection). It also is my first review, so who knows whether I will do more of these reviews or not. This review may not even be published, but instead reside as a blueprint here in this directory.

I won’t go into the storyline much at all since I do not want to include too many spoilers.

The movie can perhaps best be described as “a western detective storyline”, a hybrid movie. I recall that I read somewhere that Ennio Morricone said that he could not produce the same music for this movie that he once did for Sergio in the old spaghetti-western movies era, and Ennio actually was right when he said that in retrospect.

Quentin may not have realized it back then at that moment in time, but that was the correct answer by Ennio to give, because the movie Quentin directed is very different from what Sergio created. So the music would not have fit 1:1, hence why the music is a bit different and more gloomy compared to Ennio’s musical score for other western movies.

I also think that the music score that Ennio created fit to the movie “The Hateful Eight” perfectly well, even though I happen to believe that it was not Ennio’s best music score either - but he deserved the award for his earlier work anyway, and the music for the movie is not bad at all. It is a fitting music, sort of like Hans Zimmer is doing for the movies he acts as audio chief in charge. Even Hans Zimmer does not always produce great scores, but he does usually create music that fits very well to the movie at hand. At any rate, back to the movie The Hateful Eight itself.

I believe that the name for the movie was in many ways inspired clearly from “The Glorious Seven”, so Quentin did a slight mockery here, even more so as “The Glorious Seven” was based on the older “The Seven Samurai” movie from Japan.

Quentin put characters into the movie that people could hate, though also perhaps understand at the same time, given their background. None of the main characters is a truly lovable or very likeable person, not even the gallows dude and neither that dude from England.

They are all sort of villains, all of them, combined to meet at the same location - some more villains than others. But no real hero as such. In some ways this was true of the old movie “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” as well - all three were ultimately criminals or at the least ruthless killers.

This part of the movie “The Hateful Eight” is pretty nice and was very well done - the character development part was a success. Sure, there are some flaws here and there; the mexican guy was a bit odd, then some other characters were a bit … off too, over the top. A jamaican accent? Seriously? In a tavern far, far away? Come on now … that was more an attempt to spice-it-up a bit by Quentin. And the crazy lady that was chained by the sheriff was also a bit over-the-top; I’d almost call it overacting.

But if we look past these points, I think that the set of characters was good and well-developed. Here Quentin deserves some praise for the plot.

My favourite two characters played in the movie were actually played by Samuel Jackson (no surprise, he is a genius in just about all movies directed by Quentin; my favourite two performances from him still came by Pulp Fiction, which I think is Quentin’s best movie, but also Jackie Brown, where Samuel convincingly played a drug dealer pimp); and the other character I liked was portrayed Kurt Russel. The accent was just awesome. The performance was also one of his best, in my opinion. He really made me believe that he was a ruthless sheriff from the get go - in some ways lawful, but also brutal. An evil lawful sheriff so to speak.

Granted, beating up his female prisoner in every third or fourth scene was a bit excessive in regards to violence, but hey - that is Quentin’s style. A bit over the top, as always. Perhaps there could have been fewer violent beat-up scenes, but we can expect this from a Quentin movie in many ways and I don’t hold this quite against him.

I absolutely loved the way he integrated the landscape into the movie. This reminded me of the initial scenery in The Shining. I think he could have integrated more of this, because once the movie played in the tavern, it was like a repetition of the older movie he did called “Reservoir Dogs”. Which was a good movie too - not as good as Pulp Fiction, but a good movie nonetheless. It would have been interesting if he could have played more landscape-like plots perhaps before everyone would meet in the tavern. Because once they were in the tavern, they were kind of “locked in” until the movie would resolve.

Now, I will rate the movie “The Hateful Eight” as a 5 out of 10, perhaps a 6 out of then, which isn’t that great but it is still quite fair, in my opinion. A bit above average. (Addendum: currently, in 2021, the movie has a rating of 7.8 on IMDB, so perhaps my lower score of 6 was indeed a bit too low.)

So then, why would I not rate it above 6?

The thing is that the movie also had some serious shortcomings, much more so than in others Quentin did - yet at the same time, I also think that the movie had a LOT more potential than it achieved, and I think that this can be explained because Quentin did a few mistakes.

Most of these have been mentioned before on IMDB reviews; the awkward narration in the middle of the movie was really really AWFUL. Someone else explained that it was for in-move pause between coffee break or toilet break, so I can understand this a bit, but even then, it could have had some more visual effect and someone who has a better NARRATIVE voice than Quentin.

It really sort of cheapened the whole movie - but even that isn’t the main problem with the movie. It is just one more element where the movie really did not live up to its full potential.

The movie draws some inspiration from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly too, because if you think about it, in Sergio’s older movie all three are actually evil dudes. Even The Good played by Clint Eastwood. I mean he sort of tortures The Ugly (Eli Wallach, who I think was actually the key character in that movie and also the best performance IMO, even though both Clint and Lee van Cliff were awesome too). Also note that in The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, all of them also had a slight “softer” side. Sure, The Bad is really mean but even he does not kill everyone at plain sight. For instance, he once calls that fat big dude to stop slapping The Ugly with a “That’s enough.”. And he also does not torture The Good, even though it is explained that he knew that The Good would not talk when tortured; if he were fully evil he may have tortured anyway just to make a point. But he was an “evil” person with a purpose and a goal so that was his softer side.

The Good is semi-good, like when Clint Eastwood claims to want to hang The Ugly but then shoots him into freedom from the gallows, so he is really the good guy clearly, even though he is also mean and evil. And even the Bad is not the most evil ever, just corrupt and greedy.

Now, in “The Hateful Eight”, I think they are all pretty evil folks. Perhaps the Sheriff is not so evil initially but he quickly gets corrupted as the movie drags on. Samuel Jackson is pretty evil and a liar; in some ways he is actually the main actor or in-movie narrator, which is interesting.

There are a lot of small ideas that partially make up for some of the other problems in the movie. For instance, I think that Quentin had a great idea there with the whole scenery of the movie.

The icy landscape is really beautiful. The various other settings are nifty as well - the big wooden house which gets “split up” into different sectors inside, once the actors are in the main room. The stable is quite some way away from the main house, which adds to the creepy atmosphere; the whole movie is both a western but also a detective story of some sort.

The wide angle of the camera was nice too, you really get to see a lot in great detail here. So for this alone, that is actually worth 2 of the points here. Granted, in the second half of the movie you no longer see any of the scenery; Quentin could have perhaps integrated more scenery from the outside into the storyline, to really make best use of the … 35mm camera or whatever he was using there.

In one scene, Samuel Jackson notices some red drop on the ground, a candy. Why the candy is on the ground is explained in another part of the movie, which fits together decently well.

The action scenes, while not that many and typically Quentin’s style is over-the-top, are ok too. It’s a bit too much drama for my taste, with the wounded actors slowly dying away but I guess this is his trademark.

I also think that the plot is ok in principle. The main scene initially is Kurt Russell being the bountyhunter and dragging his prisoner about. It makes some sense that he is anxious that someone will try to free his prisoner.

Samuel Jackson is also a great storyteller in the movie, I found the story where he would kill the son of someone else quite curious - everyone could see that it was a made-up story crafted in order to provoke the listener but it still was a good idea in my opinion.

The music was ok but Ennio did better scores really. Ennio explained that he did not want to copy his work for Sergio, which I can understand; still, the music was not as good as he did when he was younger. I think that Ennio Morricone is awesome but it was not his best work. Ennio explained that he wanted to do another style too, and I understand the explanation but still, I can see that Quentin was not completely convinced. Then again, the movie is also not an oldschool western either with the detective component, so I guess that goes both ways; it definitely was not an italo-western, also not an US-western, it was more a Quentin-Detective-western mixed with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction.

The actors were all good - I don’t think there was anyone who was really bad. Samuel was the best by far in my opinion; Kurt was good too. The noble englishman was ok; a bit over-drama but ok regardless.

Anyway. I will now come to the parts of the movie that do not work:

There are quite some weaknesses in the movie, some minor ones, some larger ones.

For instance, Samuel so happens to shoot down someone else.

Shortly afterwards, nobody else minded this. Uhm … now excuse me but why did not even the coachman mind this?

Or the Sheriff??? I mean, seriously? What the fuck??? Someone who is supposed to uphold the law?

They all pretended as if nothing happened!

I understand that the thugs did not care, no problem here, but the other folks? Hmmmmm. Perhaps the Sheriff was a huge thug too, but it wasn’t as obvious. Sure, he beat up a woman but a Sheriff who does not uphold the law is already such a huge thug that you wonder why he’d still be Sheriff.

You need to keep in mind that they would not know Samuel’s character before that - but the new Sheriff instantly accepts it when Samuel’s character provokes someone else into shooting at him and then killing the one who tries to kill him? Without saying ANYTHING? Come on … you could well be the very next person who gets shot down. I would have at least expected SOME kind of other reaction than the blanket … zero reaction. This is as if Quentin just wanted the scenery, and did not care about the plausability of reaching it.

A lot of the movie reminds me of Pulp Fiction and especially Reservoir Dogs. If you saw both, but in particular the latter, it is VERY much similar. The Reservoir Dogs is also shot in a somewhat similar way - like one room, or few rooms where the action all takes place. And lots of talking, too.

The action is a bit from Kill Bill over-the-top. It’s not bad IMO but sometimes it just is over-drama. Like the female prisoner, after the 5th time of getting blood splattered all over her, it sorta was too much really. How much more blood do you have? 10 liters? 50? I mean, really.

The narrator in the middle of the movie destroyed a lot too.

I think it would have been better if Quentin would have used another way to get the storyline going forward.

Another problem I would make out is the frequent use of the word “nigga”. Ok, I get it, Quentin likes to dramatize with racist dialogue and we can assume that this was more frequent in the old days of western-movies, the secession wars and so on. This part is “fine” in the sense of a movie and narration. Slaves and abusing them as cattle.

But - the other part is the DELIBERATE use of the word to the point of where the whole scripted dialogue revolves around that single word, more or less. And I feel that this just distracts rather than really add much at all to the scenes - after the 20th use of the word itself, I wondered a lot. What is the point of the word if it distracts so much and destroys any dialogue or monologue?

I think for me one big problem really was that so much reminded me of Reservoir Dogs. I actually think that Reservoir Dogs also was the better movie here, simply because it was original back then and did not try to incorporate so many different ideas.

It is much closer to Quentin’s real “original” way to create movies.

I am somewhat disappointed with the last ~10 years from Quentin, his older movies were really much, much better - Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction in particular, but also Jackie Brown. Sure, Jackie Brown isn’t as great as Pulp Fiction, but I think that it was a really, really nicely made movie, with characters that are all somewhat believable. The character development still is an area where Quentin is good.

In many ways, while he still tries to bring in new concepts, and he did (Django - black actor as the hero of a time where racism was massively integrated into the southern US society, good idea for that; Grindhouse the scenery was nice in particular for the blood scenes, which in some ways can also be seen in The Hateful Eight in the initial landscape scenery), there is sort of the “big picture” lacking. Something that would allow Quentin to leave behind the flicks and transcend into his own style. Nothing wrong with homage to good old movies, don’t get me wrong but after a while, Quentin should really get to define a style that uniquely fits to him AND to the movie itself too. Just like he did with Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown.