Hammerman Ikon

Hammerman Ikon Film Guide

The Hateful Eight
2015
**
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks

Shortly after the Civil War, a stagecoach carrying two disparate bounty hunters, a woman to be hanged, and a brand new sheriff pulls up to Minnie's Habberdashery in Wyoming. The travellers are forced to take refuge from a blizzard with a group of men, who may or may not be in the same place by coincidence. Quentin Tarantino's eight movie and the second Western in a row was shot on 65 mm film like the historical spectacles of the 1950s and 1960s. However, this epic is basically a a filmed three-hour stage play. The uneventful events indoors unfold s-l-o-w-l-y, obviously in chapters and in scrambled chronology. The director's trademark verbose dialogue and some mannered performances, by Goggins and Roth in particular, make it all seem even longer. There is one surprise, though. It's close to halfway point before there's any actual gore, but eventually the heads begin to pop and, by the end, the set and the characters are covered in blood. Instead of borrowing an old Spagetti Western soundtrack, Tarantino has commissioned a new one from Ennio Morricone, who won an Oscar for his troubles.