The ‘Hangman’ John Ruth is on his way to Red Rock to execute his prisoner Daisy Domergue, meets another bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren and Chris Mannix, the supposedly newly appointed Sherriff of Red Rock, both of them stranded in a severe blizzard. A distrusting John cuts a deal with Marquis to mutually protect their bounties as they take shelter in an isolated Haberdashery. With the owners of the place not to be found, the caretaker takes them in to share the place with 4 others. As they begin to unveil their real intentions, all hell breaks loose.
Language:
English
Running Time:
167 min
Rating:
A
Release date:
15 January 2016
Directed by:
Quentin Tarantino
Produced by:
Richard N. Gladstein
Shannon McIntosh
Stacey Sher
Written by:
Quentin Tarantino
Starring:
Samuel L. Jackson
Kurt Russell
Jennifer Jason Leigh
Walton Goggins
Demián Bichir
Tim Roth
Michael Madsen
Bruce Dern
Music by:
Ennio Morricone
Shot by:
Robert Richardson
Editing by:
Fred Raskin
Distributed by:
The Weinstein Company

What’s Hot

  • One thing that catches the attention is how brutally prominent the dialogues are penned, spanning the entire movie. With a host of white men pitted with a black man inside the confines of a haberdashery, hate talk is not a rarity and both sides get some impressive dialogues which help overcome the monotony of shots with little or no action.
  • Samuel L. Jackson puts up a great fight when outnumbered by men indulging in racial slurs. His nasty attitude looks quite convincing and the scenes towards the end when he has to partner with Walton Goggins who produces a wide range, are notably well done. Credit goes to Jennifer Jason Leigh for her rather unflinching portrayal of a mean gangster in captivity.
  • The way each of the characters are built into the story line is just perfect thanks to the screenplay that provides the right amount of time to establish the premise. The entire first half strikes the right chord as a result of this approach and sets it up nicely for the conflict resolution part.

What’s Not

  • Despite having a unique backdrop in the times of cow-boyish bounty hunters post the civil war, the storyline is plain and dated involving gangsters, bounty hunters and law enforcement. It kills the movie experience towards the second half where mindless violence has to take over proceedings, with no other way to go forward. The use of disgusting sexual references to trigger the spate of killings is of particularly bad taste.
  • A shack full of frenzied cowboys including gangsters, war veterans, law officials – we know it’s the perfect recipe for a showdown of guns, but the blatant overdose of brutal violence without any plausible logic for featuring them, robs the story of any credibility built over the duration of the first half. The ending sequences are really hard to justify what the point being made is.

Badges

Dialogues
Acting
Screenplay

Verdict

Verdict Stamp

With a steadily paced beginning, well placed character introductions and strong yet impressive dialogues, ‘Hateful Eight’ promises to be an exciting roller coaster, but never really takes off as it keeps skidding down a slippery slope at a laborious pace as it is disfigured by the inexplicable use of violence and further dampened by a dated plot.