So last week I introduced you to the Hateful Eight’s primary cast. the actual eight characters in the title. I may have even been a little overzealous about the schmoozing I was doing on every character except Madsen’s Joe Gage (The more I think about Joe Gage, the more preposterous his presence feels). I may have even sounded a bit like Tarantino’s directing abilities exceed all of the greatest directors. If I did, well, guess what? I’M NOT DONE! BAD WORDS AHEAD.
- Major Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) is an unforgiving motherfucker. In fact, this article could be titled “Shit Samuel L. Jackson says and does that makes you go man, that’s fucked up.”
This movie starts with him perched on a stack of dead bodies that he has killed for his own bounties. As the movie proceeds, he takes joy in watching John Ruth (Kurt Russel) torture and belittle his live bounty, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh). Hell, he even partakes in a little bit himself. He makes no compromises with any of the film’s characters, even while dying and he is quick to pull his gun out on anyone. About halfway through the movie he gets to kill a few bad guys in order to solve a mystery: Who is helping this inbred hillbilly (Domergue) try to escape from John Ruth? In the process he shoots…fucking everyone…except Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), which is surprising, given the tension between the two throughout the film.
We even learn, from Mannix himself, that Major Warren has a bounty on his head. This is Mannix’s way of trying to tip the scales in his favor with John Ruth. The bounty is from him escaping from a Confederate prison. A prison that Warren burnt down to escape. In the process of burning his way out of prison, he killed a bunch of Confederate AND Union prisoners. Upon this discovery, did Jackson have any remorse? FUCK NO.
One of the interesting situations in the film is that everyone in this movie has met, or has heard of each other in some way. One of those connections is between Major Warren and…
2. General Sandford “Sandy” Sanders (Bruce Dern), the Confederate.
While it is painfully obvious that the general is hiding something, we don’t find out until after his death, when the film reveals that he has been forced into the situation at Minnie’s Haberdashery (Fancy name, yeah?). But that’s not the secret that makes the movie great. The fact that he is looking for his missing son, who may or may not be dead (but Sandy thinks the situation is dire) is pretty sad, but that isn’t even the most interesting thing.
The most exciting reveal is made in the most epic manner. Major Warren, after being at odds with the Confederate General (We learn that Warren and the General were enemies at the Battle of Baton Rouge). At this moment, Warren puts a revolver at the lap of the old man and starts utterly shit talking his dead son.
The reveal? Warren killed the general’s son, who met the fate of many a white bounty hunter who came up the mountain looking to collect a bounty on Warren’s own head. The depravity doesn’t stop at this revelation. Warren takes the story to very uncomfortable levels (remember, this is Quentin Tarantino). In a monologue that I can only describe as OSCAR WORTHY, Warren describes a story of how he stripped the general’s son naked, made him walk in the snow for hours until he was so cold he would “do anything for a blanket.”
He did do anything. He sucked Major Warren’s big black dingus, johnson, willy, etc. He never said BIG BLACK DICK, which blew my mind. To cap it all off? He told the general “I didn’t give him that blanket.” That comment, the way the line was delivered, was probably the hardest, cruelest line ever spoken in a movie. The general pulls heat and Major Warren shoots him dead. So Major Warren was just trying to set up a situation where he could remove the general from this world. Bravo.
3. The Lincoln letter is just a way for Major Warren to be cruel.
At the beginning of the film John Ruth asks Warren about a letter. The letter is written by the recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. The letter is signed and written to Major Warren. This is a moving moment for Ruth as Warren lets him see it again (They’ve met each other before). The significance of the letter is not that it was from Lincoln. The significance was that it was just a tool for Warren to continue torturing the white folks around him. You know, the ones who refer to him as “the nigger bounty hunter.”
It is discovered that the letter is a fake, and that Warren wrote it himself. After Mannix calls him on his bullshit, Warren fesses up and this devastates John Ruth. Ruth wanted to know why he would do this and it was simple: It was a way to keep white people from treating him like shit. For example: The letter got him a spot on Ruth’s wagon, which saved him from dying in a tremendous blizzard.
It also allows Warren to establish on of his character traits: “I’m a liar.” Which brings us back around to something interesting. Did he lie about the letter being fake just to watch the spirit drain from John Ruth’s Eyes? Did he lie about making the general’s son suck his BIG BLACK ZUCCHINI? Hell, is this man even who he says he is!? I am going to be the first person to put this thought out, with absolutely no credibility as a literary analyst: What if Major Warren is the devil and his whole existence is to completely destroy the assholes on this mountain?
4. Someone with sleek, black, girly gloves poisons the coffee!
During that epic scene of shooting the general, it is revealed through a narrative by Tarantino himself that someone slipped some poison into the coffee. It was obviously Joe Gage (Michael Madsen). Demorgue sees this happen and she keeps her mouth shut. John Ruth and OB (James Parks) drink the coffee. This was kind of sad because out of all of these people, these two seemed to not be total assholes (They were, but at least they had some kind of empathy. It gets even sadder after you realize they truly were the only two people with any humanity left).
The poison used was some pretty gnarly shit because it led to projectile blood vomiting of epic proportions. John Ruth and OB both meet a bloody, painful end. After the turmoil, while everyone is confused, Mannix decides he needs a cup of coffee, but he is warned by Warren not to drink it because it’s poisoned. This little event leads to Major Warren lining up everyone, except Mannix, against the wall to deduce who the fuck is helping Domergue.
5. The Pain Train Arrives
Warren figures out Bob’s tenancy at the haberdashery is bunk because Minnie hates Mexicans. We learn that Minnie had a sign in her business that said that Mexicans and dogs are not allowed. He then mentioned that the sign was taken down because she decided to let dogs come in. That’s some more of that cold Samuel L. Jackson talk. This confrontation ends up with Bob’s head being comically blown off, literally.
It also ends with Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth) being gut shot, Mannix shot in the leg, Joe Gage being shot and everyone being fucking shot except for Major Warren. The camera then pans….DOWN….into the basement. Who is this? Is that? NO! CHARMING POTATO! (Channing Tatum). The pain train has arrived. From the basement, our man, Tator, manages to shoot off Major Warren’s Big Black Dingus.
6. Flashbacks, Flashbacks, Flashbacks
At this point we get a flashback and some more of Tarantino’s narration which puts into frame the events that took place before all of this went down. Just to sum it all up quickly, Domergue is the sister of the leader of the Domergue gang and she is in the process of being rescued by said gang. Her brother? Charming Potato himself, Jody Demorgue. Jody is a cold motherfucker who orchestrates a ruthless, bloody mass killing at the Haberdashery as they murder Minnie, Sweet Dave and all of the inhabitants and employees of the business. All in order to set up saving his sister. He doesn’t last long though. When the film returns to the current events Jackson shoots him in the head and quips “Yeah, that’s what you get you dick shootin’ off motherfucker” (I paraphrased that).
7. A Bloody End
Everyone is dead and it’s painfully obvious that no one is making it off this mountain alive. Major Warren is bleeding out, Sheriff Mannix is bleeding out and Demorgue can go nowhere because they have their guns on her. She tries her damndest to make a deal to get away, but there aren’t any deals to be made. Knowing they would be dead before the blizzard is over, they hang Demorgue until she dies, then then lay back, have a chat and credits roll.
The build up to this ending and the execution is the reason I give this flick an 8 out of 10 and the reason I strongly suggest you try to grab a copy and watch it at home. There isn’t enough cool shit happening on screen to justify skipping your children’s food for the next 2 weeks to see it on the big screen, but at home? Man. Cook up a pot of stew, grab a blanket and be absolutely gripped by the true thespian Samuel L. Jackson is.
For you literary nerds out there, I may actually work on a more formal paper exploring that whole Samuel L. Jackson as Satan. No promises though. Projects like that cause me to neglect things.
That was really fun. I hope you enjoyed this quite a bit. I am going to share something with you about myself! I love movies. Going to the theater is a great pass time for me, however, because I’ve seen three films in as many weeks, I am now homeless and suffering from the rickets. My children didn’t make it and my wife, well, she found someone who makes a lot of money selling vacuum cleaners. It’s terrible I know. I would love to go to the movies again, and if you would like a new review on a new movie, maybe you can help me out! Go to Swag Bucks and register. Fiddle around with it and earn a few bucks. Just Chill Here earns a penny for every dollar you earn, so if I can get 10,000 of you as referrals, I could go to the movies once a month or so. Okay, I keed, I keed. You can still go earn some free money to spend on that upcoming Super Bowl shin dig!