Oswaldo Mobray speaks about justice with the assurance of a professional. The revelation of his identity as Pete Hicox turns that elegance into part of a performance intended to protect a crime.
An executioner who seems to give Ruth's journey meaning
Oswaldo Mobray presents himself as the executioner of Red Rock. His presence seems to connect conveniently with John Ruth's mission, which is to transport Daisy to the place where she is meant to be hanged. Tim Roth plays this identity through refined manners, careful diction and a willingness to explain his trade. The character offers an appearance of order within a room full of suspicious men.
The identity is false. He is Pete Hicox, one of the gang members who has occupied the haberdashery to rescue Daisy. His role demands more than hiding his name: he must convince the others that he represents an institution set outside the conflict. If they accept him as an executioner, his words can carry a weight that a mere traveller would not have.
The choice of disguise is especially calculated because Ruth defines himself by taking his prisoners alive to the gallows. The supposed executioner appears as the next link in a professional chain. That affinity makes it possible to talk about procedures and punishments without the relationship seeming too suspicious. The criminal slips into the language with which his opponent justifies the work.
Roth's performance separates formal delicacy from the violence of the trade he announces. He can speak courteously about killing a person because he presents the act as a regulated function. That distance between tone and content makes the speech alluring and prepares the later irony: the man explaining legitimate authority is using a lie to help with a criminal operation.
The difference between justice and revenge in the mouth of an impostor
Mobray develops an explanation of the need to separate justice from personal satisfaction. His argument ascribes value to procedure and to the executioner's distance from the condemned person. The scene allows us to hear a reasoned formulation within a world where almost everyone has financial interests, grievances or desires for retaliation. The speech seems to offer a criterion for judging the violence that is approaching.
The revelation of the identity does not automatically make every point in that argument absurd. A person who lies about who he is can still set out an intelligible distinction. The irony lies in the fact that his behaviour contradicts the authority from which he speaks. The film forces us to separate the content of an idea, the credibility of the person expressing it and the purpose he pursues in doing so.
The dialogue about law and revenge takes on another resonance in the ending. Warren and Mannix invoke the fate Ruth anticipated, but they execute Daisy within the conflict and without an outside trial. The false executioner had described a distance that neither of them preserves. His performance thus introduces a criterion that the film itself uses to make the resolution uncomfortable.
The character also shows how much weight a way of speaking can carry. Precision and refinement encourage an impression of competence, even if they do not prove the identity claimed. Mobray needs the others to mistake familiarity with professional speech for proof of a real position. His mask works because it offers an organised and apparently reassuring explanation in a situation that everyone wants to understand.
Pete Hicox, the gang and the off-screen kinship
The gang flashback of Domergue's gang shows Pete taking part in preparing the deception. The haberdashery had been occupied before Ruth's arrival, and the stories of its guests were coordinated. By learning this past, the viewer can return to the executioner's conversation and recognise it as one piece within a collective performance.
The surname Hicox recalls Archie Hicox, the British lieutenant played by Michael Fassbender in Inglourious Basterds. The relationship does not need to be inferred from that coincidence alone: Tim Roth commented on it in an interview with CinemaBlend, where he presented Pete as Archie's ancestor. In the same answer he showed uncertainty about the exact number of generations, so it is best to avoid a genealogy more precise than his statement allows.
That kinship belongs to an explanation outside the plot of The Hateful Eight. The film does not depict a family tree or need the audience to know Archie in order to understand Pete. The connection between the two Hicoxes broadens the web of relationships between films, but it does not by itself explain the character, choices or fate of either man.
Tim Roth's contribution to Tarantino's cinema finds a particularly theatrical variation here: playing a criminal who plays a convincing official. His verbal elegance allows the lie to occupy a central place before it is exposed. Pete Hicox reveals the extent to which a room can accept as authority someone who masters its language, even when that mastery serves to destroy the order it claims to represent.finds here a particularly theatrical variation: playing a criminal who plays a convincing official. His verbal elegance allows the lie to take centre stage before it is exposed. Pete Hicox reveals the extent to which a room can accept as authority someone who masters its language, even when that mastery is in the service of destroying the order it claims to represent.
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