Is The Hateful Eight Tarantino’s Western Equivalent Of Reservoir Dogs?

With a new ‘Hateful Eight’ trailer out this week, we get an even better glimpse at Quentin Tarantino’s eighth movie, a gritty, violent western starring, amongst his other regulars, Sam L. Jackson, Tim Roth, and Michael Madson.

Following on from his Oscar-winning efforts with ‘Django Unchained’, we see QT tackle the same genre but to very different effect. With that in mind, it appears there are, in fact, a number of similarities to his début film, ‘Reservoir Dogs’.

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As learned from the synopsis and as per the footage in the trailer, the plot’s about eight strangers - all bounty hunters - who become trapped overnight within the confines of a mountain shelter. Instantly, this echoes the stand-offish nature of ‘Reservoir Dogs’’ warehouse.

The tense mood of distrust amongst the characters and potential betrayal replicates what made ‘Dogs’ so engagingly intense. Replace the character friction of gangsters Mr. Blonde (Madson), Mr. White (Harvey Keitel), and Mr. Orange (Roth) with ruthless cowboy-era bounty hunters Kurt Russell’s John Ruth, Sam Jackson’s Major Marquis Warren, and Bruce Dern’s General Sandy Smithers, and you can see the parallels.

“One of them fellas is not what he says he is,” utter Russell’s character, which, as we know, is what the group of bank robbers in ‘Reservoir Dogs’ thought of one of their own, namely a cop planted in on the heist.

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That notion of isolation and paranoia we see in Tarantino’s 1992 flick certainly applies here, with the group of very different but extremely dangerous men all stuck in a small space. While many believed (and still do) that ‘Reservoir Dogs’ could exist and indeed prosper as a stage show with its few locations and main story in or around the warehouse, the same could arguably be applied here too.

The question is whether QT’s latest feature will live up to the hype and indeed quality of his previous movies. And so far, the indication from the released footage suggests a resounding yes, it most certainly will.

‘The Hateful Eight’ is in UK cinemas from 8 January, 2016.

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Picture credit: The Weinstein Company