An admirable addition to the canon.

Rating: Null/10 (29 August 2016)

Nobody makes movies like Quentin Tarantino and I'm a huge fan of his work. This is the eighth film that he has both written and directed (one of the reasons for the title) and I've seen them all - I think "Kill Bill" (really two works) is my favourite - except "Death Proof" which I decided to miss out. Like his seventh film "Django Unchained", this is a western of sorts but, whereas the previous story was set just before the Civil War, this one is located in the period just after the war. In both cases, race is a major theme.
In some senses, "The Hateful Eight" is like a Shakespearean tragedy: it is largely set in one location (a snow-bound cabin in the depths of Wyoming), there is lots of glorious dialogue delivered is slow, measured tones, the tension is relieved by a running joke (a door that needs nailing shut against the biting wind), and at the end the stage is littered with bodies. Tarantino is always ready to take his time and the narrative is built up and the characters introduced in a slow, even leisurely, style but, when the action comes, there is plenty of duplicity and revelation in a veritable blood-fest.
In a fine cast with some of the director's favourite players, the eight of the title are portrayed by Kurt Russell and Samuel L Jackson as bounty hunters, Bruce Dern as a former civil war general, Walton Goggins as the sheriff of Red Rock, Tim Roth as the one Englishman, Michael Madden and Demián Bichir as mysterious strangers, and the hapless prisoner Jennifer Jason Leigh who gets it in the face in more ways than one. If not Tarantino's finest work, this is an admirable addition to his canon.