A Western-Mystery through Tarantino's unique sensibility

Rating: 7/10 (17 June 2020)

That Hateful Eight strikes me as fundamentally a gritty, '60s-style western with mystery elements, a lot of conversation, and a fair amount of nastiness.
For maybe the first two-thirds, H8 is a talky Western populated by intriguing but unlikable people. There is clearly something going on beneath the service, but it's unclear what, or which characters might not be what they seem. Some here call this a murder mystery, which is wrong, or at least only right to the extent that you could describe this as a "period drama." You could call it that, and I could see why you would, but it's still ultimately wrong.
The cast is excellent, particularly Samuel L. Jackson as a tough bounty hunter and Jennifer Jason Leigh (giving her best performance in years) as a decidedly ornery criminal.
There is a lot of talking in this movie, and while it's generally interesting there's probably too much of it. Still, while the movie's pace is a bit slow, it never flags.
The last part contains the brutality Tarantino is so enamored of. It's both gory and emotionally disturbing, which I guess is what people want from his films, or, at least, what he wants to give them, most of the time.
I've never cared for hyper violence, I'm not generally into Westerns, and Tarantino is a director I sometimes like but have yet to love. With all that said, the movie of the first two-thirds I would probably give an 8 but the increasing unpleasantness often felt both a bit gratuitous and, more importantly, not entirely in keeping with most of the movie. It's as thought Tarantino was torn between wanting to create a character study and wanting to create a Tarantino gore fest and finally decided to just go ahead and do them both.
Overall, I'd recommend this if you can deal with the gore and unpleasantness, because it is well written, directed, and acted.