Sulphur on 17/1/2016 at 15:52

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...in which there are eight people, and they're hateful. -ish. I'm not going to mention much that constitutes a spoiler because you're better off going in with at least with a somewhat fresh perspective. This is my (perhaps slightly jaded) view on it.

It's a Tarantino movie through and through:


* Sort of pastiche-y (not as much as previous films, however)
* Motormouth dialogue
* Sudden explosions of violence
* Prodigious use of the n-word
* In desperate need of actual editing
* Various exploitation movie hooks
* The usual suspects (Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen)


It's well-shot, and at least half of the soundtrack is original Ennio Morricone work (!). The acting is, of course, by a bunch of experienced hands, and they're dependable for the duration.

Everything else... well. This is a 3 hour movie, the first hour of which I spent profoundly bored. The last time I felt like this was during the first half of Death Proof, and that isn't a coincidence. There is far too much talking in this movie, and much of it is flavoured profanity laced with exposition. I'm a fan of Tarantino's ability to write hypnotic yet scenery-chewing dialogue: see almost anything Uma Thurman says in Kill Bill. But if none of it is in service to either a) character or b) deeper plot motivation, then all I'm doing is cradling my hands in my lap and wondering if this is the bit where people usually get someone to nosh them off at the theatre.

So this thing is structured like a stage play, more or less, with a bunch of inveterate douchebags milling about a single set (two if you count the carriage ride at the beginning) and eking bits of exposition out of each other before then doing something ludicrously violent to each other. There's great things that can be mined out of this sort of constraint: cf., Shakespeare, tragedies. The problem isn't that none of these people is a hero or a villain - they're all tangled masses of fucked up. The problem isn't that none of these people lack sufficient motivation to do whatever they're doing - they're given that. The problem is this: none of these people is written as an actual person. They're vehicles that plot threads are dangled and wound around, before ending up strangled to death by them.

You could say Kill Bill Vol. 1 had the same problem. KB1 had one ace in the hole, though, and that was a relentless sense of pace, of a headlong rush into the next set piece after setting it up with just enough exposition and implication. And then, Kill Bill 2 filled up the gaps in the story with context and character, which was admittedly hammy as fuck, but it knew this and wove it into the structure of the narrative; that was why it worked.

TH8 actually shares this aspect of being crafted in the same way, but doesn't quite understand it. Or, more precisely, it knows exactly what it is, which may be why it doesn't quite work. As a small experiment, it's kind of clever: a one-room (well, more or less) exploitation movie where all the gears and cogs are plainly visible as they're levered into place, but that's something that is also accounted for as part of the performance, as the structure twists around itself a little. Everything is executed with surgical precision. But then, it is also executed with a knowing, clinical dispassion, and that is what wipes away any illusion of depth to the proceedings for me.

I wanted to like it, but I came away without any strong feelings for the movie either way. It's not awful, but it's also not great. Lots of technical heft, not enough heart.

Tomi on 17/1/2016 at 19:51

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The naughty and derogatory ethnic slur that is sometimes used to refer to people with black skin. Begins with an N, has six letters, two G's in the middle, and ends with an R.

I'm not giving you any more hints. :D

zoog on 17/1/2016 at 20:20

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Tomi, they say f*ck but dare not to say n*groe? I'd better think it's no-word. Or it's like in Soviet Russia when communists forbade word j*w and it became a slur.
Sulphur, of course it's "a cultural thing", and what i was supposed to think?%) excuse for offtop.

zoog on 17/1/2016 at 21:23

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You're continuing your success to embarass me. Hope it's what it's meant to be.

Renault on 17/1/2016 at 23:16

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Didn't you mean to post this?

[video=youtube;HuvLUhuo52w]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuvLUhuo52w[/video]