The Hateful Eight (2015)
★★★★ — The Hateful Eight (2015)
Quentin Tarantino's eighth feature film arrives with the kind of baggage only a director of his stature can carry. Released in December 2015, The Hateful Eight was originally presented in a roadshow format in a 70mm Ultra Panavision print, a format that had not been used for decades and required specialist projection equipment to be installed in select theatres across the United States. That is a considerable logistical undertaking for a film set almost entirely in a single room, which tells you something about the scale of Tarantino's ambition, or perhaps his showmanship, depending on your point of view. The story concerns a group of strangers, bounty hunters, soldiers and outlaws among them, who are forced together by a savage Wyoming blizzard and end up holed up in a roadside haberdashery. What follows is less a straightforward Western and more a slow, suspicious standoff in which nobody quite trusts anyone else, and for good reason. It is the kind of film that owes as much to Agatha Christie as it does to Sergio Leone.
Tarantino wrote the screenplay himself, as is his habit, and produced through his Double Feature Films banner alongside the Weinstein Company and FilmColony. Those who have followed his career from Reservoir Dogs onwards will recognise certain preoccupations here: the enclosed space, the slow erosion of trust between a group of armed men, the dialogue that circles around a subject before it detonates. It is a more deliberately paced piece than much of his earlier work, and at 188 minutes in its standard theatrical cut, it makes no particular effort to rush itself along. The score was composed by Ennio Morricone, his first Western score in decades, which by any measure is a notable piece of film history. Production design by Yohei Taneda and cinematography by Robert Richardson give the whole thing a polished but claustrophobic look, all amber lamplight and snowbound dread outside the windows.
The cast is, by any measure, a strong ensemble. Samuel L. Jackson, a regular Tarantino collaborator (you can find other work of his reviewed here, including Black Snake Moan), plays Major Marquis Warren, a bounty hunter whose presence in the haberdashery sets much of the plot in motion. Kurt Russell is John Ruth, a gruff and suspicious man transporting a prisoner played by Jennifer Jason Leigh in a performance that drew considerable critical attention at the time of release. The supporting ensemble includes Walton Goggins and Demián Bichir, both of whom are well used in a script that gives almost every character a moment to command the room. It is the sort of cast that could carry a film on dialogue alone, which is fortunate, because dialogue is doing an enormous amount of the heavy lifting here. For more of Tarantino's work on the site, including his earlier chamber-drama tendencies, see also our review of Jackie Brown and Death Proof.
I fell asleep the first few times, but I do love it?! I gotta admit… the first few times I tried watching this, I passed out not long after they arrived at the Haberdashery. And that’s really early. Tarantino’s slow-burn storytelling is usually gripping, but something about this one just acted as a cinematic lullaby for me. But once I actually made it through (watching it with my girlfriend rather than alone this time), I have to say, it’s fantastic. The tension builds like a pressure cooker, the performances are top-tier (Kurt Russell and Samuel L. Jackson kill it), and the president’s letter reveal is one of Tarantino’s best twists. The whole thing plays out like an old-school stage play dipped in blood and betrayal. Reservoir dogs but in the wild west. Still, I gotta knock it down a little. If a film puts me to sleep multiple times before I finally power through, that’s gotta count for something.
I do think the slow-burn thing is worth flagging for anyone coming in cold, because it is genuinely a film that demands a bit of patience and, probably, the right company. Watching something like this alone late at night is setting yourself up for a battle. But once it has you, it really has you, and the theatrical quality of it all, that single-location pressure-cooker feel, makes it one of Tarantino's more formally interesting experiments. Whether that justifies nearly three hours is a question every viewer has to answer for themselves. For me, it just about does. Just.
Rating: ★★★★ | Year: 2015 | Watched: 2024-12-03
Trailer
▶ Watch the official trailer for The Hateful Eight (2015) on YouTube
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) · Inglourious Basterds (2009) · Pulp Fiction (1994) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
More with Samuel L. Jackson: Snakes on a Plane (2006) · Black Snake Moan (2006) · Jumper (2008) · Pulp Fiction (1994)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More mystery: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · One Way or Another (1975)
