YET THE THRILLER IS DISTINCTIVELY TARANTINO, SAYS CRITIC
The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw posted a five-star review of Quentin Tarantino's new film, The Hateful Eight, calling it an "old-fashioned three-hour masterpiece." He also mentions a strong resemblance to Brian De Palma's Carrie:"The Hateful Eight are snowed in together like Agatha Christie characters in a country house, or indeed the Big Brother house," states Bradshaw in the review. "But unlike an Agatha Christie story — but very much like, say, Reservoir Dogs — there is no notional authority figure to exert control over everyone. The only authority is violence and superior firepower, or the superior firepower of talk — the threat of violence. Everyone is armed of course, and there are other weapons to hand, and the mere presence of criminals with bounties on their heads creates a market force in favour of violence. The pre-violence tension, including the scattershot N-bombing, is unbearable, and coolly sustained by the dialogue. It is itself a kind of violence and leads to a quite extraordinary climax just before the Intermission. That, along with the Overture, is part of the film’s old-fashioned furniture.
"There is a little of Sergio Leone and the classic pulp westerns of Elmore Leonard, and as a big drama in a little place it could almost be a Sam Peckinpah version of a swearified Harold Pinter. Later, for obvious reasons, it will look like Brian De Palma’s Carrie. But this movie is just so utterly distinctive, it really could be by no-one else but Tarantino. The inventive, swaggering dialogue is what drives it onward: quintessentially American. (I continue to think that Inglourious Basterds [is] the weakest of Tarantino’s films because he strays away from the American wellspring.) And The Hateful Eight repeats a classic trope from Reservoir Dogs: the idea of being in unbearable pain from a gunshot wound, but still talking, still being a threat. There is a horrible kind of black-comic heroism in continuing to threaten and crack wise while being in the same kind of unbearable agony you are planning to inflict on someone else. 'Thriller' is a generic label which has lost its force. But The Hateful Eight thrills."
Previously:
TARANTINO HAD 'DJANGO' CREATIVES WATCH 'CARRIE'
BASTERDS CLIMAX CHANNELS CARRIE
MUIR LINKS BASTERDS TO SCARFACE & CARRIE
Updated: Friday, December 18, 2015 12:24 AM CST
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