The Hateful Eight Movie Review

Hello, fellow moviegoers!
   The Hateful Eight is the eighth film directed by Quentin Tarantino. There has been a lot of hype surrounding this movie as Tarantino is considered to be one of the best in the business right now.  What few people realize is this film was almost never made. A few years back, the script for this film leaked online. Tarantino was outraged and said that he wasn’t going to make it anymore. About six months passed, then he announced that he reworked the script a little bit, and that they would be finally making this film.
   The Hateful Eight stars Kurt Russel, Samuel L. Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, and Walton Goggins. It is the story of eight people stranded together in a small house over the course of a couple of days. One of them is John Ruth (Russel), a bounty hunter set on taking his fugitive (Leigh) to hang. Tensions build amongst these eight people as nobody seems to trust anybody else. With all of the troubles this film went through, is the final product one to be impressed by?

   The Hateful Eight is another Quentin Tarantino movie. To some, that means it is an utterly brilliant piece of cinema. To others, it’s an overly violent film, with way too much strong language and crude humor. Personally, I lean a little more towards the foremost. I thought that The Hateful Eight was a great mystery story with whimsical writing and even better performances.
   Quite often, mystery films are a little too much build up and not enough pay-off. The Hateful Eight is the furthest thing from that. There is quite a long wait before they even arrive at the cabin and the mystery begins. It was a lot of build-up to the build-up to the reveal. Yet, throughout all of this, I was never bored. This is mainly due to the well-developed characters, and how they were all written so differently. Obviously, there are eight main characters, and Tarantino was able to differentiate all eight of them from each other. Even though some of them don’t have very much screen-time, they were all fully fleshed out characters with different backgrounds and motivations.
   The musical score was very well done. It had a sense of uneasiness to it that represented the film as a whole extremely well. It definitely deserves the Oscar nomination it got, and I would even go as far to say that it has a very good chance to win that trophy.
    While the overall story was astounding, and there were all sorts of twists and turns that were unexpected, sometimes it was a little too clear. By that I mean that they would perfectly lie out everything for the audience when it was revealed, rather than have the audience put some of it together themselves. True, you need to give the audience enough for it to make sense; but you still need to leave some to the imagination.
   The same can be said with the level of violence in the film. While Tarantino is known for his extreme violence, I couldn’t help but feel that some of it was there just to be there. Some of the extreme bloodshed was there just for shock-factor, rather than to add depth or forward the plot. It took me out of the film a little bit, and as I said earlier, it could have been left to the imagination.
   The acting in this film was fantastic! Jennifer Jason Leigh was a standout and undeniably earned the Supporting Actress nomination she got from the Oscars. Samuel L. Jackson was great, as he is in a majority of films. Kurt Russel portrayed his character brilliantly, and he was what made this film interesting from the start. I was also pleasantly surprised by Walton Goggins. At first, when they introduced him, I wasn’t a big fan. Surprisingly, he was one of my favorite characters by the time the film started to wrap up.
   While The Hateful Eight isn’t for everybody, if you are a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you will enjoy this movie. It’s a great mystery story with characters so well-realized that you could actually imagine sitting down and having a conversation with them. While, at times, it doesn’t leave enough to the imagination, I still really enjoyed The Hateful Eight and would recommend it. (If you are willing to sit for almost three hours.)
8.5/10

   So what did you think of The Hateful Eight? How does it live up to the rest of Tarantino’s work? Let me know by commenting on this post. Also, if you enjoyed this review, share it on Facebook and Twitter. It really helps! Don’t forget, I post every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, so check back then for more movie reviews and editorials!
                         
Thanks for stopping by!