FILM REVIEW: The Hateful Eight

The Hateful Eight

Stars: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh

Director: Quentin Tarantino

187 min

Three stars

This is due to a distribution row over the films 70mm Ultra Panavision format – an archaic camera technique used in the 50s and 60s on ‘horizon-stretching extravaganzas’.

But get yourself down to the Showroom in Sheffield and you can catch Tarantino’s eighth feature length instalment and his second foray into the Spaghetti Western genre.

As a Tarantino buff, his releases always fill me with a sense of excitement and nervousness – will it be another Django Unchained disappointment? Will anything ever be as good as Death Proof?

Happy to report I left the cinema very happy, a definite return to form despite a bumpy start.

Set sometime after the Civil War in the wintry Wyoming landscape, bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) and his fugitive captive Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) are heading to Red Rock, where Daisy will hang for her crimes.

Along the road, they encounter fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L Jackson) and Red Rock’s new sheriff Chris Mannix.

But as a strong blizzard takes hold they seek refuge in a barn where some other suspicious characters have also rolled in to – and after 90 minutes this is when the film really gets going.

It becomes a double-crossing, who’s done it, who’s going to do it, suspense-filled edge of your seat mystery.

You can tick off/down a shot on the Tarantino checklist – extended dialogue, ultra-violence, narration interjection, black comedy, and of course a cameo from the man himself.

I took a while to warm to it, but stick with it as I think it’ll soon be my most wanted.