The Hateful Eight

In 1967, Roy Orbison starred in his one and only film: a lightweight and gimmicky western called ‘The Fastest Guitar Alive’. It wasn’t a successful endeavour for anyone concerned. Orbison wrote a passel of bland songs for the soundtrack, only one of which – ‘There Won’t Be Many Coming Home’ – had anything specific to say. The producers, concerned that it was too serious and not in keeping with the film’s lighthearted tone, removed it. Forty-eight years later, Orbison’s civil war ballad is restored to the soundtrack of a western. A Quentin Tarantino western. And if the producers of ‘The Fastest Guitar Alive’ thought it sounded too serious in that film, it comes off as downright flippant here. Tarantino’s use of the Orbison song is the final irony in a 70mm epic that spends three hours bristling with irony, righteous anger and the kind of wallowing self-indulgence that characterises its director's approach to filmmaking.

Now, regular readers of this irregularly updated blog (I tries, folks, I really does) will know that I’m a dyed-in-the-wool Tarantino fan. I can entirely appreciate why people don’t dig his work, and completely sympathise with those whom it renders decidedly uneasy. But, because of a number of interrelating vectors, from being blown away by ‘Reservoir Dogs’ at the impressionable age of twenty, to meeting the man himself two years later when he was guest of honour at the Broadway Cinema’s Shots in the Dark festival, the trajectory of my cinephilia has progressed in tandem with Tarantino’s career. He’s the only director whose entire filmography I’ve seen on the big screen.

So, yes: I likes me some Tarantino. I even like ‘Death Proof’. And I don't edge uneasily back from his work, convinced he’s a racist because his scripts use the N-word. No racist would gift such iconic parts to black actors. What I’m not sure about, however, is his attitude to women, and nowhere have I had such doubts than with ‘The Hateful Eight’. Reader, I’m going to come straight out with it: ‘The Hateful Eight’ is the first time I’ve come out of a Quentin Tarantino film not quite sure what to make of it.

It’s been about a week since I saw the film and the more I think about it, the more I’m tempted to narrow down my rationale to one of two options:

1) Tarantino, deciding that his usual critics will accuse him of racism anyway, structures a three-hour roadshow epic in such a way that his audience will be sent stumbling into the intermission in the immediate aftermath of an almost Shakespearian soliloquy, delivered in half-mocking-half-menacing fashion by Samuel L Jackson, the (ahem) thrust of which is the phrase “big black dingus”;

2) It’s a remake of ‘Reservoir Dogs’ disguised as a remake of John Carpenter’s ‘The Thing’ with Kurt Russell in the Kurt Russell role and a certain interchangeability between Jennifer Jason Leigh and Channing Tatum as regards the role of the thing.

Either way, it’s a film of two halves. The first documents the stormy stagecoach journey that brings bounty hunter John Ruth (Russell) and his shackled charge Daisy Domergue (Leigh) – the running joke about the mispronunciation of her surname is the script’s subtlest aspect – to Minnie’s Haberdashery en route to the town of Red Rock (aficionados of ‘Django Unchained’ won’t be surprised at the ‘Blazing Saddles’ homage). En route, Ruth reluctantly ends up giving a lift to fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Jackson) and Red Rock’s sheriff-to-be Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). Arriving at their stop, Ruth and Warren are suspicious that Minnie (Dana Gourrier) and her husband and business partner Sweet Dave (Gene Jones) are nowhere to be seen and the establishment has been left under the stewardship of taciturn Mexican Bob (Demian Bichir). Also at Minnie’s, seeking shelter from the storm, are dandy English hangman Oswaldo Mowbray (Tim Roth) – the proximity of the character’s name to notorious blackshirt Oswald Mosley cannot be coincidental – enigmatic cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen) and doddery Confederate General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern). What follows is a series of variations on a theme, the theme being how downright fucking loathsome all of these individuals are in their own special way. Racism, snobbery, intransigence, intolerance and the deep social, political and geographical divisions created by the civil war all come to the fore. At one point, various parties suggest that the cabin itself be divided in two (I couldn’t help but think of the ‘Steptoe and Son’ episode where Albert and Harold reduce the family home to a microcosm of apartheid) as a temporary alternative to killing each other.

The second half is marked by at least two tonal shifts, the first of which is done to brilliant effect. The linear, classical storytelling of the first half goes out of the window, to be replaced with voiceover, flashbacks, shifting perspectives … basically, the whole non-linear playbook that Tarantino has delved into with zero restraint throughout his career. For approximately half an hour, ‘The Hateful Eight’ morphs into an Agatha Christie locked room mystery, with Warren in the Miss Marple role, if Miss Marple packed a pair of pistols and everyone in St Mary Mead used the word “nigger” like it was going out of style. This, for me, was easily the most focused part of the proceedings and I could happily have watched “Samuel L Jackson in a drawing room mystery with swearing and pistol whipping” for the rest of the movie; however Tarantino curtails this section with a short sharp shock of a rug pull, immediately seguing into an extended flashback that manages to be sweatily tense even though we all know, by this point, exactly how it’s going to play out.

Then we’re back to the present and the final act. Which is where the film seems to start juggling desperately – it’s a state of the nation piece; no wait, it’s an essay on how ideology deflates in the face of survivalism; no wait, it’s a variation on the theme of “my enemy’s enemy is my friend”; no wait, it’s a Corbucci checklist replete with amoral cynicism and violence against women; no wait, it’s an ugly ironic statement on how liberal hand-wringing for interracial tolerance is founded on the big self-delusion of the liberal hand-wringer wanting to feel better about themself – and never fully commits to a final statement. Maybe this is what Tarantino intended. Or maybe he just decided that America – and by extension the world – is fucked and the best we can do is laugh at the sheer absurdity of it while we pointlessly kill each other.

Whichever, this is Tarantino we’re talking about and the man couldn’t do existential despair if he binged on Bergman, Tarkovsky and Tarr for a year. And that’s what gives ‘The Hateful Eight’ its wilful perversity: never mind the unpleasant places it goes, Tarantino’s sheer exhilaration in the process of film-making is splattered across every frame like a valentine’s love heart made of blood squibs.

WINTER OF DISCONTENT: Bloodrayne

Has anything good ever come out of the movies-based-on-videogames subgenre? Is Uwe Boll’s reputation as the man who does for cinema what Jack the Ripper did for escort agencies actually deserved? To try to answer these two questions, I watched ‘Bloodrayne’.

Fuck my life.

The answer I’ve arrived at regarding the first question is: only if you’re a thirteen year old boy and the idea of Lara Croft being incarnated by Angelina Jolie, Alice from the ‘Resident Evil’ games by Milla Jovovich or Bloodrayne by Kristanna Lokken is enough to give you a stiffy without even watching a single frame of the resulting productions. Let’s face it, only a thirteen year old boy besieged by hormones and obsessed with video games could possibly feel any stirring of excitement over these largely sexless opuses.

So kudos to Uwe Boll for at least putting one sex scene in ‘Bloodrayne’, even if it is utterly joyless and perfunctory.

Are any more kudos due to our much-hated German director? Well, let’s spend a little time with the movie and attempt an answer.

‘Bloodrayne’ is about a vampire called Rayne (Lokken) who is first introduced in captivity, being paraded as a sideshow freak. Um. No. Let’s back up a tad. Rayne is sort-of vampire. A damphyr (I’m guessing at the spelling) – in other words, a product of a vampire/human union. The union in question being the rape of her mother by sadistic patriarchal vampire Kagan (Ben Kingsley).

Yes. Ben Kingsley. Sir Ben Kingsley. The guy who played Gandhi. In a Uwe Boll film.

Fuck my life part two.

Anyway, Rayne’s out for some payback against Kagan, while Kagan is more concerned with protecting his fiefdom against the ministrations of the Brimstone Society. This organisation is headed up by Vladimir (Michael Madsen), a man who comes across as a somewhat podgy Van Helsing with a haircut redolent of Bon Jovi circa 1986. Vlad’s retinue include Sebastian (Matthew Davis) and Katarin (Michelle Rodriguez). Katarin’s loyalties to the Brimstone Society are compromised by her relationship with her manipulative father Elrich (Billy Zane).

Vladimir and his team are seeking to destroy Kagan, Elrich has his own agenda, and all of the various parties have a vested interest in Rayne. Despite an attraction to Sebastian, Rayne’s own agenda – the simple, powerful and unambiguous desire for vengeance – dictates her choices, and she embarks on a quest for three talismanic items guaranteed to vouchsafe her an audience with Kagan. The risk is considerable, however, since to reunite the purposefully scattered talismans could provide Kagan with his passport to true immortality and absolutely power.

All of which sounds promising, ja? Vampires, vampire hunters, court intrigue, Machiavellian power plays … throw in swordplay, explosions, nudity and intense people galloping full tilt across rugged landscapes on horses, compress it all into a 90 minute running time and surely this has got to emerge as some kind of ballsy, fast-paced guilty pleasures and never mind the 2.8 IMDb rating. I mean, surely?

Wrong.

‘Bloodrayne’ is quite frankly dull. Boll clearly has no idea about pacing, characterization or simply engaging with his audience on even the most basic level. Some of the blame has to be laid at the door of screenwriter Guinevere Turner – virtually every line of dialogue is stilted and unconvincing. Not that Boll (yup, we’re back to the main offender) even tries to get more than the most lackadaisical line reading out of his cast. And anything approaching an actual performance – fuhgeddaboutit! Lokken, not the greatest thespian talent to begin with, handles the swordplay decently and looks hot in a leather waistcoat, but remains a bland heroine. Madsen is embarrassingly miscast. Rodriguez, always one of my favourite tough gals in the movies, looks cool but is given sod all to work with. Only Meat Loaf – deliberately hamming it up as a dissipated nobleman …

… and Billy Zane, who tosses off his few scenes with all the glib sarcasm the production deserves, emerge as memorable. It is better that we do not speak of Ben Kingsley. I will assume he had severe gambling debts, desperately needed the work, and not speak of his involvement in an Uwe Boll film again.

Every aspect of the film is perfunctory, as if Boll had a checklist that read: hot chicks, swashbuckling, neck-biting, crossbows, tits, blood; and randomly threw one or more of these elements into whatever scene he was currently filming. As a result, what should be trashy is tedious. What should be exploitative ends up an exercise in ennui. What should be a blood-drenched, decadent hour and a half seems to last twice as long. No joke, I can’t remember looking at my watch this often during any film I’ve seen in the past few years. Nor did I hit pause so many times to slope off for a pee, pour another drink, make some toast, watch cars passing on the street below or check Facebook. Somebody had posted a picture of their Christmas tree. It made for more entertaining viewing.

Boarding Gate

The first film of Olivier Assayas’s I saw was ‘Irma Vep’, a dreamy fantasia on two highly different forms of cinema – the work of French director Louis Feuillade, and the iconography of Hong Kong movies – starring the strikingly beautiful Maggie Cheung. It was a film in which very little happened, but happened so hauntingly and elegantly that to be anything other than completely mesmerized wasn’t an option.

‘Boarding Gate’ – while poles apart from ‘Irma Vep’ in style and content – is immediately recognizable as the work of the same director. Olivier Assayas gets the language of cinema. Framing, mise-en-scene, use of light, depth of focus, spatial cognizance, editing, performance – every frame of ‘Boarding Gate’ bears the stamp of an artist who knows exactly what he’s doing.

Watching this as the second part of today’s double bill was revelatory. With ‘The Red Siren’, Oliver Megaton attempts juxtapositions, narrative rug-pulls and the conjuration of enigmatic characters and emerges with a wildly variable piece work that only just sidesteps being a big old mess. Assayas achieves all of the same things in ‘Boarding Gate’ and creates an effortlessly cool slice of cinematic existentialism.

Which isn’t bad considering that Assayas himself acknowledged ‘Boarding Gate’ as an exercise in “constructing a project around B-movie economics”, shot on a constrictive budget in just six weeks. If only all cheapies looked this good! The cover blurb on the Revolver Entertainment DVD seems to acknowledge the aesthetic, screaming “More daring than ‘Basic Instinct’, and with more tension than ‘Eastern Promises’, Asia Argento and Michael Madsen deliver the goods in this fast-paced, action-packed thriller.” Which is kind of true one respect and total bollocks in another.

Let’s deal with the comparisons. More daring than ‘Basic Instinct’? Well, it dares to be an intelligently-made thriller rather than a flashy, trashy POS, so score one. It’s got Asia Argento in the kind of tough/vulnerable/sexy/individualistic role she was put on this earth to play. Massive trade up from Sharon Stone’s by-the-numbers femme fatale, so score two. Then we’ve got Michael Madsen looking a tad overweight and rumpled, instead in Michael Douglas looking a tad overweight and rumpled, so we’ll call that one evens.

More tension than ‘Eastern Promises’? Since ‘Eastern Promises’ – like ‘Boarding Gate’ – is an examination of a certain milieu, a certain criminal underclass and its established traditions, rather than a suspense-driven thriller, the point is moot. ‘Eastern Promises’ gives us Viggo Mortensen in a naked smack-down in a bathhouse while ‘Boarding Gate’ gives us Asia Argento in skimpy black underwear getting all BDSM on Michael Madsen’s ass, so I guess it’s a question of you pays your money and you takes your choice.

“Fast-paced, action-packed”? Well, Assayas sure knows how to stage a chase or a shoot-out, and he pulls off a character-sinking-out-of-frame-to-reveal-antagonist shot worthy of Asia’s dad. And he turns up the heat in the second half, his heroine adrift in Hong Kong and encountering treachery at every turn. The early stages of ‘Boarding Gate’ are slow-burn to the point of almost extinguished, with a pivotal twenty-minute scene just shy of the midway point playing out as a two-hander.

I haven’t mentioned the plot. Not going to, either. Assayas sets up one character, effects a nifty rug-pull by swapping the focus to another very quickly, then concludes the aforementioned twenty-minute scene with a narrative development that sends the film spinning off like a pinball, slamming its way through the crowded streets and neon-bathed clubs of Hong Kong. Some of it is pure pulp, yet Assayas’s subversive intelligence is always present. Argento and Madsen put in great work, and there are stellar supporting turns from Kelly Lin and Carl Ng. The whole thing looks amazing, and there’s an inspired final shot that showcases the most artful use of blurring I’ve ever seen. It captures an uncontrived moment of redemption, and allows Assayas’s heroine to drift upwards, out of the frame and out of the film, as if she were an angel.