We’ve gotten a few brief looks at Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, including a brief teaser back in April and word of a full trailer out of Comic-Con, but now we’ve got the real deal, from The Weinstein Company. Almost two and a half full minutes! Jeez, way to make me look bad.
The eight in question are, of course, played by Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Tim Roth, Damian Bichir, Michael Madsen, Walton Goggins, and Bruce Dern, respectively. We’ve come so far since Tarantino was threatening not to make this at all, haven’t we?
In THE HATEFUL EIGHT, set six or eight or 12 years after the Civil War, a stagecoach hurtles through the wintry Wyoming landscape. The passengers, bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his fugitive Daisy Domergue (Leigh), race towards the town of Red Rock where Ruth, known in these parts as “The Hangman,” will bring Domergue to justice. Along the road, they encounter two strangers: Major Marquis Warren (Jackson), a black former union soldier turned infamous bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix (Goggins), a southern renegade who claims to be the town’s new Sheriff. Losing their lead on the blizzard, Ruth, Domergue, Warren and Mannix seek refuge at Minnie’s Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover on a mountain pass. When they arrive at Minnie’s, they are greeted not by the proprietor but by four unfamiliar faces. Bob (Bichir), who’s taking care of Minnie’s while she’s visiting her mother, is holed up with Oswaldo Mobray (Roth), the hangman of Red Rock, cow-puncher Joe Gage (Madsen), and Confederate General Sanford Smithers (Dern). As the storm overtakes the mountainside stopover, our eight travelers come to learn they may not make it to Red Rock after all…
As you surely know by now, Tarantino shot The Hateful Eight in 70 mm, and you can see it that way come Christmas Day. And hot damn, it looks glorious. I could watch this on mute and still be giddy. The Hateful Eight has more hirsute men in vintage scarves than a Brooklyn coffee shop (haha, good one, Jay).
Do you think it will have bloody vengeance and a dusting of racial slurs? I’m going with yes. Also, has Jennifer Jason Leigh ever been in a movie where she didn’t get the sh*t kicked out of her? I don’t know what it says about movie fans that we like watching Jennifer Jason Leigh get beat up almost as much as we like watching Sam Jackson say “motherf*cker.”
“They call him ‘The Hangman,’ you know why?”
“Why, Sam.”
“Because he hangs people.”
“Oh.”
“…You seem disappointed.”
“Well now that you say it, I’m not sure what I was expecting.”