The Hateful Eight: Insufficiently nasty

The Hateful Eight (2015) • View trailer 
Three stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, gore, profanity, graphic nudity and racist behavior
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 12.31.15

Quentin Tarantino’s best films are highlighted by deliciously snarky dialog, scene-stealing — and sometimes career-reviving — performances by delectable character actors, and twisty scripts that build tension to the screaming point.

Every time somebody enters Minnie's Haberdashery, those already inside — in this case,
John Ruth (Kurt Russell, left), Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a wincing
Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern) — have to yell for the door to be nailed shut, lest the
blizzard blow it open again.

The Hateful Eight gets two out of three.

Tarantino’s tough-talkin’ homage to classic Westerns — complete with an awesome new orchestral score from 87-year-old Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), his first Western score in 40 years — simply doesn’t have enough story to justify its butt-numbing 182-minute length. The set-up is rich with potential, and it screams for the multiple back-story treatment that made Kill Bill so engaging ... but no; aside from two brief flashbacks, we and the cast are stuck in the same claustrophobic cabin for three interminable hours.

Granted, the actors do their best to hold our attention. Ultimately, though, the posturing and narrow-eyed ’tude can’t make up for a script that doesn’t kick into gear until after the intermission (roughly 100 minutes in).

Tarantino makes us wait much too long for the good stuff, and by then things are rather anticlimactic.

And yes, I’m fully aware that the “good stuff” is the enfant terrible filmmaker’s gleeful dollops of blood and gore. But even here, it feels like Tarantino is only half-trying; having teased us with a cabin laden with hammers, shovels, iron spikes and all sorts of other implements of potential mayhem, he settles for gunfire. Which, tasteless as it sounds, is quite disappointing.

As he did with Kill Bill, Tarantino divides this saga into chapters, starting with “Last Stage to Red Rock.” The setting is post-Civil War Wyoming, with a six-horse stagecoach doing its best to outrun an approaching blizzard. The driver is forced to halt after coming upon former Union soldier-turned-bounty hunter Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), perched in the middle of the road atop three of his sanctioned kills.

Warren’s horse has given out on him; he’s hoping for a lift to Red Rock. But that’s a problem; the stage has been chartered exclusively by fellow bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is handcuffed to his prisoner, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh), and escorting her to a date with the hangman at Red Rock.

The wisely suspicious Ruth views any strangers as either a) somebody trying to steal his bounty; or b) somebody trying to rescue Daisy. But it turns out that Warren and Ruth know each other, if only vaguely; the requested ride is granted, if grudgingly.

Oblivion: A sleek, provocative ride

Oblivion (2013) • View trailer 
Four stars. Rating: PG-13, for action violence, sensuality and fleeting profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 4.19.13

Director/co-scripter Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion hearkens back to 1970s sci-fi thrillers that involved lone heroes struggling against horrific situations that weren’t quite what they seemed, at first blush.

Having discovered that somebody — or something — has set up a homing beacon that
is blasting a signal into space, Jack (Tom Cruise) carefully picks his way through the
remnants of the Empire State Building, seeking the source of this unexpected
pocket of technology.

Kosinski and his fellow writers — Karl Gajdusek and Michael Arndt — definitely caught that vibe. Their film carries strong thematic echoes of Planet of the Apes (the original 1968 version) and The Omega Man, with an added dollop of the psychological tension and heightened paranoia present in The Matrix.

Factor in some rip-snortin’ action sequences — which are freakin’ awesome on a giant IMAX screen — and the result is 126 minutes of clever, well-paced, post-apocalyptic suspense.

Which is not to say that Oblivion is destined to become a classic. Kosinski has a tendency toward overwrought bombast even when unnecessary: such as, for example, a love scene that rises to a frankly silly soundtrack crescendo from composers Anthony Gonzalez, Joseph Trapanese and M.8.3. I’m reminded of Giorgio Moroder’s similarly gaudy scores for 1980s rock-video movies such as Flashdance, Scarface and Top Gun: a suitable musical environment for those popcorn flicks, but not quite the right tone for an otherwise thoughtful sci-fi drama.

Kosinski comes by this style-over-substance tendency honestly, having helmed 2010’s laughably bloated TRON: Legacy. Fortunately, he’s working with a much better premise and narrative here, which can withstand his occasional visual and aural assaults.

The year is 2077, decades after an invading alien armada blew up Earth’s moon as the ultimate first-strike assault; the resulting environmental havoc destroyed civilizations around the globe. But mankind rose to the challenge and beat back the so-called Scavengers, although the cure may have been worse than the disease; thanks to the widespread use of nuclear weapons, most of what remained of Earth became uninhabitable.

Humanity’s remnants constructed a massive orbiting space station dubbed the Tet, from which the survivors hope to mount a massive exodus to Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. In pursuit of that grand scheme, Earth’s remaining resources — particularly water — are being extracted by huge, computer-driven factories, and sent to the Tet.

Two-person “monitoring teams” are stationed near each factory, ostensibly to handle any necessary repairs. Unfortunately, pockets of the Scavengers — Scavs — still remain on Earth, and are doing their best to sabotage these operations. In order to help safeguard the repair crews, globe-shaped weaponized “drones” scour the devastated landscape, seeking and eliminating any remaining alien resistance.