The Hateful Eight (2015) ****1/2

Following in the steps of Sergio Leone and to a lesser extent Clint Eastwood, The Hateful Eight is a continuation of the spaghetti western idea that no one is totally good and no one is totally bad. There is no definition like the team dynamic where the good guys wear white and the bad guys wear black. Everyone is out for their own hide and if unscrupulous things have to happen, so be it. Guys may get shot in the back, much to the John Wayne ideology chagrin. That is the true code of the west and if you want to survive, you will need to follow that every moment of every day. Accept it.

In The Hateful Eight Quentin Tarantino gives us a collection of flawed characters, thrown together in the middle of a snow storm. In the center is the legendary bounty hunter (Kurt Russell) who is known for always bringing his bounty’s in alive, this time being a woman waiting to hand for murder (Jennifer Jason Leigh in a great performance). They happen upon a black Union Major (Samuel L. Jackson) who will eventually be the only person for the bounty hunter to trust. As they wait in the “haberdashery” they make acquaintances with the hangman (Tim Roth), the sheriff (Walton Goggins), a cowboy (Michael Madsen), and a famed for his viciousness Confederate General (Bruce Dern). Something is not right at this stop and causes paranoia from all sides.

The film plays out like a cross between an Agatha Christie story (ala 10 Little Indians) and Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. Who’s in on it? Who isn’t? Who is going to turn the tables? Everything is there. Even though this film is more subdued than 2012’s Django Unchained, it maintains the ability to stand on its own as an addition to the Tarantino catalog. I had issues with the amount of dialogue in IB and this film as a ton of dialogue, but it flows more freely than in that previous film, possibly because these characters are confined there. The 3+ hour running time doesn’t harm the film either, giving you a full story without feeling fluffed up to get to such a massive running time. It’s not normal for a 3 hour movie to have a perfect running time, but this film really does.

It’s hard to believe that we have had Quentin Tarantino gives us stories like this for almost a quarter of a century. It really is an amazing achievement to take stories from genres that were at one time considered cult or B level and crafting masterpieces that have held up over two generations. I’m looking forward to seeing what he has up his sleeve next.