Tarantino's murder mystery-like western epic.

Rating: 7/10 (27 November 2017)

"The Hateful Eight" is Quentin Tarantino's western epic of several strangers together stranded in a cold cabin in the middle of Wyoming. As the tale gradually unfolds, each character reveals their past and anterior motives while the audiences continues guessing who's who.
The film understandably takes its time in establishing each character's personality and flavor to the mix. This makes practically every character feel essential to the story while still maintaining the pacing of the engrossing plot of delivering a prisoner to a nearby town to be hung. While the film may feel strangely different than what most are expecting due to its unlikely story structure and unusually long first act. The payoff at the end is well worth the wait.
Tarantino's decision to film on location and film on actual film stock created a beautiful, almost classic looking western feel to the movie. The visual landscape is breathtaking and combined with gorgeous cinematography, this may be one of the most beautiful looking films in the year of 2015.
With the exception of one or two scenes, the film is paced brilliantly. Making the three hour runtime feel like a breeze. The mood and tension and sense of paranoia feels reminiscent of John Carpenter's "The Thing."
Unfortunately, the film does get bogged down near the end with a lot of unnecessary graphic violence and gore which adds a shock value that sometimes takes away from certain plot elements. Normally this isn't a problem but it was slightly overdone in this picture.
At the end of the day though, this is a highly recommended Tarantino picture and one to genuinely study for quite some time. It's ambitious and thoroughly entertaining from start to finish.