Seems setup for tightness and tension but then combines it with slow pace and sweeping scale, which don't wholly work together

Rating: Null/10 (7 February 2016)

Although I am not blind to his weaknesses, I do confess that I enjoy Tarantino's work and in particular love his writing of pulpy dialogue and the way he can draw tension from even the most innocent conversation. His films are littered with examples, and it is this element of his work that drew me to The Hateful Eight. The combination of a single location with a load of actors capable of delivering the material, made me assume we were in for a film where tension built across the whole film in the way he has done with individual scenes before.
The reality is that the film partly manages this, and for sure there is pleasure to be had in his combination of dialogue driven scenes with sudden violent interludes. However at almost three hours, there is simply too much film and not enough content. Considering that the film is more or less set in a single room for most of the film one wonders why it also tries to be such an epic in presentation. Okay the opening hour is mostly on the trail and has some great sweeping landscapes and vistas, but even then the real action is inside a wagon. This duality did work against the film for me because it feels so sprawling, but yet the actual narrative seems to be driven by scenes that require a tightness and tension, and it doesn't wholly come together. The setting and the spread of characters occasionally has some interesting things to say about race and politics, however it is too saggy in the delivery and takes way too long to deliver everything, that it does tend to lose impact in many ways.
Those that like his work (as I do) will still find a lot to enjoy (as I did), but Hateful Eight is a flawed film. The cast really enjoy their performances even if they don't quite have the presence of equivalent characters or scenes, whether it be moments that invoke Reservoir Dogs, or Tim Roth for some reason playing a version of Waltz's character in Django. The film looks gorgeous and has a great score, but it is the writing that brings in the issues. The lack of discipline in the delivery robs the film of a lot of the power it should have had, and in the end while it should be a satisfying resolution to the mystery, instead it because loud, bloody, unpleasantly mean-spirited and surprisingly unengaging and lacking the tension all the parts suggest it should have had.