The Hateful Eight (Quentin Tarantino)

[ledfloyd]

I also felt like it was his most angry, violent, and mean spirited film. It's absolutely fucking nasty in places. But again, I don't think this was superfluous or gratuitous. To me it feels like a very angry and nasty reaction to the angry and nasty times we are currently living in.

See, I felt that it was kind of gratuitous. I think part of it is that his thesis is kind of underdeveloped, which could be because this is his first time making a political film.

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Like what was the point of having Walton Goggins entertain Daisy's invitation to collaborate? It just prolonged her suffering. The film feels sadistic in places. And it isn't justified like it was in Django and Basterds because we're never given a sense of the atrocities this gang carried out.

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There are other little throwaway things that seem kind of silly. Like why divide the bar into Philadelphia and Georgia if that's never going to be followed up on. It's a stupid, showy way of saying, "See, it's like Minnie's Haberdashery is a microcosm of postwar America, you know!?" which was already pretty clear.

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Also, it's already been mentioned that the chapter introducing Channing Tatum was more or less unnecessary. But why spend time introducing characters who are so clearly — given what we've seen so far — cannon fodder? Is there anything at all gained from that sequence? I'm willing to hear arguments.

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I also don't understand what the point is. Like I get that he's commenting on extra-judicial killings and race relations, but to what end? It devolves into an orgy of violence and no point is ever made.

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Also, the big black pecker monologue was unsettling (and I get that it was supposed to be) because you can almost see Quentin gleefully smiling as he's writing it. Almost as if he's thinking, "look what I can get away with here because I have a black leading man!"

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Not to mention Jennifer Jason Leigh serving more or less as a punching bag during the first half of the film almost exclusively for comic relief.

ETA: Just to clarify. I don't think the film is misogynist or racist, as some have claimed. I just don't think Quentin understands politics and history nearly as well as he understands movies, so the themes are half-assed and this stuff sticks out. It's more stupidity and ignorance than malice.

ETAA: And this is all in addition to the fact that the film feels overlong and lacks the rhythms and snappy dialogue most of us come to Tarantino films for in the first place.