The Hateful Eight

Quentin Tarantino’s masterful western/murder-mystery hybrid The Hateful Eight is getting a lot of attention due to its limited, “road show” presentation, a three-hour theatrical experience projected on 70 mm film, with an overture of Ennio Morricone’s score and a 12-minute intermission. Therefore, audiences may be surprised that the widescreen photography in The Hateful Eight is much more focused on the contours of a single interior space than on wide-open exterior spaces. Long-time Tarantino leading man Samuel L. Jackson stars as Major Marquis Warren, a merciless bounty hunter in post-Civil War-era Wyoming waiting out a blizzard with a den of scoundrels (including Kurt Russell, Tim Roth and Bruce Dern), all of whom seem to be concealing a secret. The first half is nearly perfect, a slow build of pinprick tension, and while the second half gets a little repetitive, it’s also where the brilliant Jennifer Jason Leigh is at her no-holds-barred, blood-soaked best. D.B.