Quibbles with The Hateful Eight (with Spoilers)

I raved on about The Hateful Eight the other day - the eighth movie of Quentin Tarantino, and I'd say second only in excellence to his first movie, Reservoir Dogs, which in my book is high praise indeed. But I did say in that review that I saw a plot hole or two, and there were a couple of scenes I wasn't thrilled about, so I thought I'd list them here, with a spoiler warning ...

SPOILERS follow ...

I probably missed these two points, because I was so engrossed in the plot, if that makes any sense, but -

1.  How did Walter Goggins' character (Chris Mannix) know so quickly and certainly that Samuel L. Jackson's (Major Warren) letter from Abraham Lincoln was a phony?   This just seemed a little odd, especially after Kurt Russell's hardbitten John Ruth seemed so sure it was real.   Was it just so obvious that the letter couldn't be real - but if so, what was Ruth's problem in not seeing that?

2.  Similarly, how did Warren know at the end that Michael Madsen's Joe Gage was the poisoner, and not Tim Roth's Oswaldo Mobray?  I have a feeling I missed something there, but on the other hand, I can't recall when Gage rather Mobray was revealed by his own hand.

And here are two scenes I could have lived without into this otherwise superbly rendered movie -

1. Actually, a few scenes without blood or bruises on Daisy's (Jennifer Jason Leigh's) face would have been nice.   The blood and bruises became a little tedious.

2.  And I would have been fine with the schlang-sucking scene (that's right Trump, don't pretend you don't know what that means) being a little less explicit.   And, actually, I thought the whole General Smithers' (Bruce Dern) thread was superfluous to the overall narrative, much as I thought Dern put in a commanding performance as always (as did everyone else in the movie).

But these are small quibbles indeed, considering how good the rest of the movie is.   Here, again, is my full review, for more of that.

The Hateful Eight: Reservoir Dogs meet Agatha Christie Out West

I saw The Hateful Eight in New York at my son's invitation tonight, completely different from The Magnificent Seven, as the name suggests, and like all Quentin Tarantino movies, not without flaws, but deeply memorable - and highly enjoyable.

Indeed, The Hateful Eight comes closest to recapturing some of the pattern of Reservoir Dogs, which I still consider Tarantino's masterpiece and best movie.   An ensemble of characters with quirks and patter written by a Shakespeare of the clever line, which is what Tarantino is.   And the plot is pretty good, too.   Since I'll keep this review spoiler free, I won't say much about the whodunit, except that the solution is analogous to the misdirection and ensemble cast we find in some of Agatha Christie's best works.

We saw the movie in 70 mm (wide-screen high-resolution format) - a "special roadshow engagement," as the glossy program which was handed out tells us.   This is a bygone kind of movie making with long screens - employed in Ben Hur, for example - and especially suitable for a stage coach trying to outrun an impending blizzard in the beautifully desolate Wyoming landscape a few years after the Civil War.  Except - well, there was maybe about 10 minutes of the stage coach, total, in the three-hour movie (with an intermission), the rest of which mostly takes place in a single room (which was wide, however, with important characters at the edges).   Indeed, The Hateful Eight could easily have been a play on a stage, and maybe someday it will.   It would certainly work on television, even the old square-screen kind, and at one point in the movie Tarantino even seems to make this very point, by giving us a scene seen through an open barn door, a square image on the wide screen.

Ennio Morricone wrote the score - he's 87 now, and has all the talent he had when he wrote the score for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly released in 1966, except there wasn't much good, but plenty of bad-ass and ugly in The Hateful Eight.   Tarantino, in an especially cool touch, begins the movie with a three-minute overture from Morricone.

The actors and characters are all vintage Tarantino, which is to say excellent and welcome.   Some of the acting talent - such as Tim Roth and Michael Madsen - reaches back to Reservoir Dogs.   Samuel Jackson who was so iconic in Pulp Fiction plays a major role (the last chapter of The Hateful Eight - yeah, it has chapters - is entitled "Black Man, White Hell").  Kurt Russell, who in addition to an award-winning career appeared in a few less-renown Tarantino movies a few years ago,  puts in a suitably stalwart performance. And Walton Goggins, unforgettable in his television roles in The Shield and Justify, and a Django alumnus, is on hand with his patented delivery, too.  Tarantino newbies Bruce Dern, Jennifer Jason Leigh, and Demián Bichir (who was so effective in Weeds and The Bridge on television) complete the hateful eight nicely (well, "nice" might not be the best word here, especially for Leigh's character, who barely has a scene without blood on her face).

There are inevitable plot holes, characters realizing things a little too quickly, but that's a small quibble about a fine movie - the "8th Film by Quentin Tarantino," as he bills The Hateful Eight - but not hateful at all, except for maybe one or two scenes, and among the best we've seen from Tarantino in the past few decades.

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Here is my brief list of things I wasn't thrilled about in the movie - with spoilers.

Justified 6.1: Low Flying Duck

Justified returned for its final season this week, with a crackling strong episode that got right to the core of the entire series, and will no doubt dominate these concluding episodes: Raylan vs. Boyd.

And although it was good to see Raylan back with his patented style and swagger, the center of gravity in this episode belonged to Boyd, who not only delivered the best line of the night - "I'm so hungry, I could eat the ass out of low flying duck" - vintage Justified - but killed poor Dewey.

Coupled with the silently powerful last scene of Boyd looking at Ava as she sleeps, the killing of Dewey says it all about what we can expect from Boyd this season: he's a survivor, if nothing else, and he's not going to let anything or anyone get in the way of that.   He was looking at Ava with something other or more than love.  There was just a hint of evil gleam in Boyd's eyes - superb acting, as always, by Walton Goggins - and this is telling us that, yes, Boyd could even sacrifice Ava if he got any inkling that she was working against him.

And, in fact, in the other most telling scene of the episode, Raylan is doing just that to Ava, applying his customary maximum pressure on her to work with him against Boyd.  This, I've got to say, puts Raylan in not the best light.  Surely he knows that, if Boyd gets wind of what Ava is doing, he could well kill her.   And Raylan thinks, what, that's ok?  Or that he's so omnipotent he could stop that?   A hazardous game to play, with someone else's life.

At this point, Boyd likely has no specific idea of what Ava may be up to.  But his instincts are right on target in being uncomfortable about Ava.   And if she makes even one mistake, well ...

Meanwhile, it was good to see everyone else back in motion in Justified, including Art, who's recovering, and Winona, with her and Raylan's adorable little baby.  Winona also gets off a memorable line, wondering aloud what could be more important to Raylan than spending this precious time with his little baby.  What, indeed, is the story of Justified.

See also Justified 5.1: Finest Words Around ...  Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd Quotes Asimov and Keynes



different kind of crime

#SFWApro

Justified 4.1: Literate Boyd quotes Asimov and Keynes

I've been quietly watching and much enjoying Justified on FX the past few years - it's that kind of show - but decided it was time to bestow a review upon it.

I picked a good time.  The first episode of the 4th season had Boyd Crowder (played by the brilliant Walton Goggins of The Shield fame) delivering not one but too sage literary allusions, both from among my all-time favorite writers and thinkers.   Isaac Asimov got a Boyd shout-out about death being nothing - Asimov of the Foundation and robot series (and, in my view, the best science fiction writer in history) - followed by quote from John Maynard Keynes, whose economics (government spending is the way out of recession and depression) I and nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman very much agree with.  Krugman, by the way, is also a big fan of Asimov's Foundation series, and while I'm at it, I should mention that another quote from Keynes - "when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, Sir?" - is among my all-time favorite quotes.

See, that's the kind series Justified is.   You can get a universe of profundity and allusions in just a grain of a scene or conversation.  Boyd's erudition is approaching that of the legendary drug boss Stringer Bell on The Wire (who had Adam's Smith's Wealth of Nations on his book shelf).  And Boyd's relationship with Raylan Givens (well played by Timothy Olyphant) - Boyd's a white-knight with dark surges criminal and Raylan, his cousin, a US marshall - is one of the best two-sides of a coin relationship in TV drama today.  In fact, family is the primary mechanism of Justified, with Raylan's father and on-again-off-again wife also propelling the show.

As with previous seasons, the plots at the beginning are diffuse and gradual.  There's not much point in my even telling you about them.  But like tectonic plates, you can rest assured that they will come together with explosive power by the end of the season to make a uniquely satisfying piece of television narrative.

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Hey - here's a postcard Isaac Asimov sent to me when I sent him an essay I had written about the Foundation series in 1979:

And here are two of my own science fiction novels:

"As a genre-bending blend of police procedural and science fiction, The Silk Code delivers on its promises." -- Gerald Jonas, The New York Times Book Review

"There's a delightfully old-fashioned feel to The Plot to Save Socrates. . . . Levinson's cool, spare style reminded me of the writing of Isaac Asimov. . ." - Colin Harvey, Strange Horizons

Lie to Me 2.19: The Shield Reunion

Lie to Me 2.19 last night - a Shawn Ryan production - was a special treat for devotees of Ryan's masterpiece, The Shield.   Lightman encountered a cast of characters whose actors and actresses added up to a veritable Shield reunion.


Lightman and Zoe are witnessing an execution - of the first criminal Lightman helped convict (Zoe was the DA) - when Lightman realizes that the murderer's last words, that he didn't take the victim, the "Pied Piper" did, were no lie!   A great set-up for an episode of Lie to Me - and the convicted guy, who is executed despite Lightman's protests, is played by David Marciano (The  Shield's Detective Billings and more).

Meanwhile, the victim's parents - he was an 8-year-old boy - are played by Benito Martinez (The Shield's Captain Aceveda and more) and Catherine Dent (Officer Sofer on The Shield).   Kenneth Johnson (Lem!) plays a pornographer on Lie to Me who's not guilty of the crime in question,  Cathy Cahlin Ryan (Mackey's wife Corrine) a nutcase interviewed by Lightman under cover as a nutcase in a mental institution (a fine scene, and she provides key information),  and David Rees Snell (Ronnie from The Shield) plays none other than the co-killer.   I couldn't help thinking that's the path that Ronnie took after Mackie left him high and dry ....

Speaking of which - I missed Michael Chiklis and Walter Goggins on this episode of Lie to Me, but, hey, you can't have everything.   I'd love to see a movie that tells us where Mackie went, though...

As for Lie to Me, Shawn Ryan has turned it into an often exceptional show, and I'm sorry he won't be co-running it next season.   But he's left us a really fine foundation for excellent television.

See also The Shield in Perspective (no spoilers)  and  The Shield: Thoughts on What Might Happen after the Final Scene

And see also my reviews of Lie to Me and Bill O'Reilly, Saddam Hussein, and Ben Reynolds in Lie to Me 2.6 and Lie to Me 2.7: The Redeeming of Loker and Lie to Me 2.8 in Afghanistan and Viva Lightman and Las Vegas in Lie to Me 2.9 ... Lie to Me 2.11: Double Feature ... Lie to Me 2.12:  The One Prevarication ... Lie to Me 2.13: The Whole Truth and Rep Joe Wilson ... Lie to Me 2.14: Paranoids Can Have Real Enemies ... Lie to Me 2.15: Melissa George and Shawn Ryan ... Lie to Me 2.16: Ria's Sister ... Lie to Me 2.17: 'Poling on the Campaign Trail' ... Lie to Me 2.18: Lightman on the Darkside





The Plot to Save Socrates

"challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"a Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"Sierra Waters is sexy as hell" - curled up with a good book  

The Shield in Perspective (No Spoilers)

My wife and I just finished the seven season run of The Shield, first shown on the FX Channel. Netflix made the seventh and final season available just last week. We saw The Shield on the strong recommendation of our nephew, Marc Thacher. I was extolling the virtues of The Wire, and my wife and I the power of Lost, and Marc said, yeah, but trust me, you have to see The Shield, it's the best show ever to have been on television.

He may well be right.

First, though, let me offer the ever-relevant apples and oranges proviso - television series, like all works of fiction, are never completely comparable. The Wire is in a superb now classic class of its own, not as police drama, but in its vivid, scalding, anthropologically rich presentation of life in the drug drenched hood. The Shield, in contrast, is more about police. And neither show has much in common with Lost, which inhabits a unique position in story telling that transcends even the science fiction of which it partakes.

But television series can nonetheless be compared on some levels.

Lost, for example, had a weak second and most of a third season (which ended with a stunning game changing finale). It also has had its share of weak episodes. The Wire also had a few weak episodes, though nowhere nearly as many as Lost.

The Shield had none. Furthermore, it started with a kick in the solar plexus at the end of the very first episode, and played out its ramifications through all seven seasons. And the last show was the best series finale I've ever seen.

I wrote a lot about the series finale of The Sopranos - and gave a talk about it at The Sopranos conference I helped organize at Fordham University last year. I thought the ambiguous ending was masterful.

But it didn't hold a candle to the ending of The Shield, which tied up in brutal, heart-rending detail the story lines of major characters - not with tantalizing question marks ala The Sopranos, but with punch in the soul resolutions. This is story telling on television in a new, real dimension.

All great television has great acting, and The Shield is in the top tier of that, too. Glenn Close and Forest Whitaker did some of their finest acting in their guest roles. Michael Chiklis was a tour de force in the lead role of Vic Mackey in every scene. And Walton Goggins grew as Shane in the series from a sidekick to one of the most memorable characters ever on television.

I'll say more about the plot in a later review (with spoilers), but, in the meantime, trust me, you have to see The Shield.

See also ... The Sopranos Anti-Ending and The Sopranos Conference at Fordham University May 2008




5-min podcast review of The Shield