Quentin Tarantino - Ranking His Films From Worst To Best
8. The Hateful Eight
The latest film from Tarantino, The Hateful Eight is proving a polarising experience, splitting the territory between masterwork and mess. Im firmly in the latter camp, and while of course there is always stuff to admire in any QT joint (here represented by Enico Morricones score, Robert Richardsons photography, and a fine Kurt Russel performance), it remains that The Hateful Eight is Tarantinos ugliest film yet and not in a good way. Im all for bleak, but the director goes too far here, infusing his narrative without one single antithesis to the senseless violence and depravity.
Granted, this may be the point, but what Tarantino has always done well is offset his wicked ways with brief moments of tenderness - think the dénouement of Kill Bill 2, or the final exchange between Uma Thurman and John Travolta in Pulp Fiction. His films are always nasty, but theres always a heart visible through the streams of blood, always some humanity. Not so here.
Again, this may be the point - the film is called Hateful, after all - but by stripping away any form of decency, Tarantino confirms the worst fears about his work, displaying all of his problematic motifs with gleeful gusto (the proficient use of the N-word, for example, which for the first time feels worrying) without ever showing anything humane to make up for them. This an irredeemably horrible film, an amoral excuse for Tarantino to revel in the worst parts of his film-making personality.