The Hateful Eight (2015)

The name of the game in Quentin Tarantino’s latest film, The Hateful Eight, is not race relations in America, nor is it the thoughtful interrogation of justice it thinks it is. It’s not a postwar state of the union, a snowbound Twelve Angry Men, or even a claustrophobic Django Unchained. No, the name of the game is exorbitance, an immoderate superfluity indulging in the most colorful – and overfull – version of the story. When the characters on screen play raconteur, it’s charming and engaging, but Tarantino’s intemperance in the same suggests a contempt for his audience which is, frankly, wearisome.

En route to deliver his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the hangman’s noose, John Ruth (Kurt Russell) finds his carriage occupied by fellow bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and the sheriff (Walton Goggins) of Red Rock, the foursome’s destination. A blizzard, however, detours the carriage to Minnie’s Haberdashery, an insular cabin already populated by four quirky characters – a hangman (Tim Roth), a Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a writer (Michael Madsen), and caretaker Señor Bob (Demián Bichir). As the snow falls, tensions rise when the occupants of Minnie’s find that not all of them are telling the full truth.

That’s a really keen premise. Armond White took the words right out of my mouth when he called The Hateful Eight a cross between Agatha Christie and John Ford (those are, however, the only words we have in common). It’s akin to an adaptation of And Then There Were None as filmed on the set of Bonanza with the profanity filter set to Deadwood. And in the hands of a screenwriter who could restrain himself in the way that he restricts the setting, The Hateful Eight could have been a masterclass in a lot of ways that would make Sidney Lumet smile with admiration.

Tarantino is not, however, that filmmaker. It’s very nearly accurate to refer to The Hateful Eight as his most narcissistic film, as in love with the sound of his own dialogue as he clearly is, but he’s equally enamored of the Wyoming landscape which must look a treat in 70mm (which I didn’t see) but otherwise come off as sideshow decoration, and there are only so many lingering shots of landscape one can bear before the weight of three hours feels a punishing burden. The fact is that The Hateful Eight might have been a much stronger film had it been pruned much more tightly. Of its six chapters, for example, one (the fifth) is entirely negligible, consisting as it does of yet another mindless slaughter whose particulars any thinking audience would rightly have inferred. Rendered in its full Technicolor glory (and gory), however, it’s one more note of excess in a film that is grossly (and I use the term advisedly) bloated.

That’s not to say there isn’t anything to be enjoyed in The Hateful Eight. Jackson is, as ever, charismatic and a joy to watch; there’s a surprising chemistry between Jackson and Russell, poignant at both ends of the spectrum from their lukewarm greeting to the simmering disappointment between them. And there’s a knockout sequence at the beginning of Chapter Four where the tension is at fever pitch, recalling the tensest moments of Inglourious Basterds when the narrator – in a gimmick I usually loathe but here can’t imagine a better deployment – reveals that all is not as it seems because someone knows something the others in the room don’t. As Minnie’s descends into amateur sleuthing and chaotic distrust, we get glimpses of the dynamite that The Hateful Eight could have been.

Instead, we get a film that sags under its own weight. There are good performances in it, memorable moments, but what ought to be the standout feature – Tarantino’s dialogue – is utterly and disappointingly unmemorable. (I defy you to quote a line from it, the way you could after Django or Pulp Fiction.) Tarantino has said that he’s only going to direct two more films, and if that’s the case he may need a new editor (apologies to Fred Raskin, who did a good job on Django but didn’t nay-say enough here). Something’s gotta give, and at three hours with The Hateful Eight, this time it was me.

Is it some kind of perverse pattern that I’m destined not to enjoy fully the first film I review each year?

The Hateful Eight is rated R for “strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.” It’s a Tarantino movie, so you’ve got your usual (read: exorbitant) quantity of N-words, F-bombs, and strawberry-colored effluvium. A man is seen fully nude while another man narrates about sexually assaulting him, with colorful prose.

Machete Kills (2013)

If Grindhouse was an experiment in schlocky double-features, 2010’s Machete was the surprise hit lovechild, embraced as an unapologetic love letter to the B-movie genre even as it managed to make itself enjoyable beyond homage.  The sequel Machete Kills is in a weird place – it’s very much in the same tradition as its predecessor, though it suffers a bit from the law of diminishing returns by being a bit overfull of (for lack of a better term) stuff.

Danny Trejo returns as Machete Cortez, now working on the side of the United States to repel cartel incursions.  To avenge the death of his partner, Machete accepts an offer from President Rathcock (Charlie “Carlos Estevez” Sheen) to track down the mad revolutionary Mendez (Demián Bichir), who’s aimed a missile at Washington, D.C.  But Machete quickly becomes embroiled in a larger scheme involving bounty hunters and villainous weapons manufacturer Luther Voz (Mel Gibson).

If you weren’t a fan of Machete, the door’s over there, because Machete Kills is in many ways more of the same.  Trejo does his “Mexploitation” bit as well as he’s always done, growling and lumbering his way through fight scenes that ought to be beyond an actor approaching 70 (yes, he’s 69).  The master deadpan delivery that made “Machete don’t text” part of the vernacular in the original returns here, with more Machete-don’ts to add to the list.  Trejo may not have become an A-lister, but it’s safe to say he’s a real star.

The rest of the cast is rounded out with the requisite number of fun cameos – perhaps even more so, including a few big names all playing the same role through a neat gimmick that never gets old.  Sheen’s role is essentially the same joke over and over again (what if Charlie Sheen were president?), replete with a “winning” reference, but it’s a fun repetition.  Even more fun are Bichir’s Jekyll-and-Hyde by way of Speedy Gonzalez and Gibson’s scenery-devouring archvillain.  Essentially a comic version of the villain from Moonraker, Gibson turns Voz into an exceptionally entertaining figure, managing to sell excessively cheesy moments like his confession that he’s a big Star Wars fan.

I’ve said so many good things about the film, and there are more to say; Michelle Rodriguez returns as taco trucker Shé/Luz, and she gets an opposite number in Amber Heard’s beauty queen secret agent Miss San Antonio.  Plus Jessica Alba returns, plus we get closure on Osiris Amanpour (Tom Savini) from the last film, plus Sofia Vergara, plus... you get the picture.  Machete Kills is a movie bursting at the seams (an apt metaphor, considering the absurd amount of cleavage on display) with high-concept ideas and big-name guest spots that the movie feels a bit too full, to the detriment of some of the film’s more enjoyable elements.  Alba, who’s finally managing to overcome her early years as a talentless pretty face, is shuffled off-screen quickly – a dismissal, one suspects, made in order to insert more of Vergara’s scantily-clad prostitutes (a disappointing move, considering the first Machete film actually passed the Bechdel Test).

It’s not that anything in the movie doesn’t work – although William Sadler’s one-note vigilante sheriff comes close, retreading ground more successfully covered in Machete.  But there’s so much to enjoy in the film that much of it doesn’t get its proper due.  Bichir’s schizophrenic madman does about as much as it ought to, but I can’t be alone in hoping to have seen more of Gibson as Voz – especially since it’s more “campy baddie” than “career implosion” (can we all agree that Mel’s done his penance?).  In many aspects, Machete Kills leaves the audience wanting more, but not in a good way; it’s closer to dropping the mic than leaving on a high note.

Indeed, the note on which the film ends is a curious one.  After having already seen the trailer for Machete Kills Again... in Space! before Machete Kills (another grindhouse-y touch), the film proper’s last act builds to a climax that might come in the next sequel.  This kind of delay is usually a kiss of death (see the insulting way Prometheus pulled a fast one on its audience), but it almost doesn’t matter with Machete Kills, which is more about the fun you have along the way and the big ideas that don’t get fleshed out.  It might even be appropriate in the grindhouse vein if we never see Machete Kills Again... in Space! (and if box office receipts have anything to say, we probably won’t).

So while it’s no Machete, Machete Kills is fun enough to justify its own existence, even if we know Robert Rodriguez is capable of a little bit better.  Now can we please finally get Sin City 2?

Machete Kills is rated R “for strong bloody violence throughout, language and some sexual content.”  There’s as many bloody gunshots, dismemberments, and stabbings as in the last one, though much of it is done in deliberately cheap special effects that might take the sting out of it.  There are hundreds of F-bombs and scatological/anatomical derogations; aside from one woman in bottomless chaps, there’s no nudity, though plenty of women are seen in the skimpiest and gravity-defyingest attire.  And it’s implied one woman sleeps with Machete, though the visual gag is unlikely to offend (heads-up: don’t complain to the manager when you see it).