![]() My main issue with Death Proof is that it feels muddled by being part of Grindhouse. We then switch over to four women we’ve never met before, but this time around, Tarantino inverts it so that not only does Stuntman Mike not get away with killing them, he’s exposed for the coward that he is. And then along comes Stuntman Mike ( Kurt Russell)-charming, powerful, and dangerous-to up and murder the people we thought were the leads of our story. You may not think they’re great people, but you buy them as folks with their own journeys and dreams. Tarantino spends the entire first half making you invested in this trio of women and their journey and as individuals. I love how it inverts the predator-prey relationship between its two halves, which are bridged with a truly shocking death scene. There are some things I really love about Death Proof, Tarantino’s half of the 2007 double-feature Grindhouse he made with Robert Rodriguez. I don’t dislike Hateful Eight, but it’s the only Tarantino movie I have no desire to ever revisit. Yes, it makes sense for Ruth to introduce himself to everyone at Minnie’s Haberdashery, but it takes forever and that kind of slow pacing turns a languid story into a lethargic one. But the trappings of the film feel like overindulging the writer-director so that on repeat viewings, Hateful Eight loses all its tension. ![]() What’s so frustrating about Hateful Eight is that its themes are painfully relevant, and they feel like a continuation of the fascinating racial power dynamics Tarantino explored in Django Unchained. The epic scope, both visually and in terms of narrative, ends up working against the mean little narrative Tarantino concocts, turning what should be a punchy thriller into a meandering slog. There’s no compassion, empathy, or trust-only self-interest, which makes for a cold, small world, which Tarantino chooses to depict with 70mm for some bizarre reason. The opening of the movie hammers that hard as John Ruth (Russell) only makes decisions based on whether someone else’s self-interest coincides with his own. The bleak heart of Hateful Eight is that people will destroy each other, and the only trust is in mutual self-interest. Tarantino really tests himself with “compelling” as we’re torn between charismatic characters who are also varying degrees of monstrous. The title lets us know we’re not supposed to like these people, and films don’t necessarily need someone to root for as long as the characters are compelling. The philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote that “the life of man, solitary, poore, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes would probably be a fan of The Hateful Eight, Tarantino’s meanest, ugliest, most cynical movie by far.
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