By Rob Sumner

The 8^th film directed by Quentin Tarantino had everything that says, “This is a Tarantino film” except for just one thing; it wasn’t an amazing movie. In fact it was quite sub-par for Tarantino standards. It had the gore, the beautiful scenes, phenomenal acting, and amazing soundtrack…but it lacked a well written script, dragged on for 3 unnecessary hours, and it can’t seem to find a story that really catches the viewer and doesn’t let go.

Normally the length of a movie has no affect on my opinion of the film because I feel the director knows the amount of length needed to get the story across to the viewer in the correct manner. That being said, The Hateful Eight dragged on and on. It was just too long. There is too much unproductive dialogue and unnecessary shots in this film to hold the attention of the viewer for 3 hours. I found myself checking the time quite often and even double-checking the movie length just to make sure I was stuck in the theater for 3 whole hours.

As for more detail on the script, it was not terrible nor was it good. Multiple times in the film there are moments were the audience will be like “wow, that was incredible,” but there are also way too many times were they will be like “What was the point of that?” It has so many flaws and it fights against the actors throughout the entire film. Luckily the acting was very good and that allowed the script to not be viewed as complete trash.

Quentin Tarantino is a mastermind when it comes to directing and story telling. The Hateful Eight story would have been a pretty decent story IF directed by someone else. For Quentin Tarantino standards the story is poorly done and lacks something special that his previous 7 movies had. It was an extremely choppy film due to the script, the chapter dividers, and the random narration. Each major event in the film was introduced with a chapter, which is usually pretty ugly even when given a creative name but no not this one. The Hateful Eight just uses strictly Chapter 1, Chapter 2, 3, etc.… The weirdest decision this film makes is to narrate the story, but start the narration around chapter 4 of the film. Then have it go completely away until the very end of the film. I have no idea what was going on there; surely there must have been dozens of ways to properly deliver the story other than that.

After all this hate on Quentin Tarantinos new movie, The Hateful Eight, there are a few bright spots. The shots taken on Ultra Panavision 70 are stunning. This film looks absolutely gorgeous. The acting, although conflicted by the script, is phenomenal. The soundtrack is perfect, used perfectly, sounds perfect; it is perfect, perfect, perfect.

Even though it seems like this is a review to say, “Don’t see this movie!” that is not the case. In fact if you are a movie fan at all you should most definitely see this film. Even if you are not a movie fan you should most likely still see this film. The reason for that is because through all the negatives it is still a Quentin Tarantino film. The man is easily one of the greatest directors of all times. For his standards this film is poor. For ALL movie standards this film is okay, and decent enough to endure 3 hours of, just to have the satisfaction of saying “I saw the new Tarantino film.”

Image from http://www.chicago-d.com