Amazon Prime is now offering Quentin Tarantino’s chamber play The Hateful 8, which contains the destruction of a precious guitar as well as suspense and blood.
Quentin Tarantino presented one of his more abysmal films with The Hateful 8 in 2016. You can see why with your own eyes on Amazon Prime *, as the chamber-play western makes a blood trail through the catalogue from now on. But if you watch closely, you’ll also see a guitar over 140 years old get smashed – which, of course, wasn’t planned.
The Hateful 8 unleashes tension in a confined space
After his western Django Unchained, Tarantino wanted to make a sequel of sorts, but then decided to write the material without the main character. The Hateful 8 is set in 1877. The American Civil War ended just over a decade ago, but the battle lines remain hardened in people’s minds. Such is the case on a snowy Wyoming day when a number of strangers take shelter in Minnie’s corsetry shop.
Among them are: former Union major and bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), bounty hunter
John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), his captive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and Southern general Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern). As if the political disagreements between former wartime enemies weren’t enough, none:r of them will shy away from murder. In a confined space, power plays and murder plots take their course.
In The Hateful 8 you can expect a dialogue-heavy crime western in which no one can be trusted and everyone plots against each other. The concept is similar to the basement bar scene from Inglourious Basterds, extended to a feature film.
However, unlike Once upon a Time in Hollywood or Django Unchained, the film does not offer easy identification characters, but rather thrives on the ruthlessness of everyone who takes refuge from the cold in Minnie’s corsetry shop. Few American filmmakers in recent years have dealt so bluntly with their country’s deep political fault lines, which continue into the present day.
