The Hateful Eight

In an era when almost every film expands to fill as much time as possible this one takes some beating. It lasts three hours and two minutes but… It deserves every second of its running-time because it hooks you from the start and doesn’t let go.

It’s a Quentin Tarantino movie and what Tarantino does better than anyone else is blend often startling violence with cherishable dialogue and vividly drawn characters. Here he gives us all these things in abundance.

This is a western, set in Wyoming a few years after the American Civil War, but it’s also a murder mystery, told in chapters like a novel, and populated by eight – no, nine counting Jennifer Jason Leigh – of the orneriest characters even Tarantino has created. We begin in a stagecoach in deepest winter. The occupants are Samuel L Jackson, a bounty hunter and former major in the Union Army, Kurt Russell, another bounty hunter handcuff ed to his murderous prisoner Leigh, and Walton Goggins, a racist Confederate raider and possibly sheriff . All are on their way to Red Rock but a blizzard makes them seek shelter at a halfway house, Minnie’s Haberdashery.

There they encounter another bunch of desperadoes: Demián Bichir, a Mexican who seems to be running the place in Minnie’s absence; Michael Madsen, a cow hand; Tim Roth, an Englishman who says he’s the Red Rock hangman, and Bruce Dern, an aged and racist former Confederate general.

What are all these people doing there and who are they? Because they all have secrets and ulterior motives. Whose side should you be on – if anyone’s? Well, Jackson’s for much of the time, but not always. Tarantino is terrific at keeping you on the wrong foot.

As we follow the uneasy alliances that form among the eight – roughly north on one side, south on the other – the murder mystery suddenly erupts. Who dunnit and why? Jackson comes up with a plausible theory and about two hours in everything seems resolved. But no, for now another chapter starts and we have a fl ashback that leads up, with much violence of course, to the real motives of many of these people and the true denouement.

All the events are accompanied by clever, often funny, dialogue and the performances are fi rst-rate. Jackson and Russell have rarely, if ever, been better, while Leigh is a revelation – a woman quite as thoroughly villainous as any of the men.

There is also an excellent score by Ennio Morricone and superb cinematography – both in the icy, snowy wilds of Wyoming and in the haberdashery where most of the action takes place – by Robert Richardson.

But the true star, as ever with his movies, is Tarantino, who is quite the most influential and innovative writer/director of his generation.

He has won Oscars for his screenplays for Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained but said recently that he doubted whether he would ever win one for directing.

I think it’s about time he did. I think he should win one for The Hateful Eight.