#2 HATEFUL EIGHT

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bruce Dern, Michael Madison, Tim Roth,Walton Goggins and Demián Bichir Written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. Budget $44 million. Running time:167 minutes long (without intermission and 187 minutes with overture and intermission). In the words of Lawrence Oates. "I'm just going outside, down to the cinema to watch Hateful Eight. I maybe some time." And he wasn't joking, this is Tarantino's eighth film and his longest one to date, it's also his most talky, gorey and violence to boot! Set several years after the American Civil War, the plot for Hateful Eight is simplicity its self. A terrible three-day blizzard forces bounty hunters and friends, John Ruth (Kurt Russell), Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and newly appointed sherrif (Walton Goggins) to seek shelter in a trading post in the middle of nowhere. John Ruth aka The Hangman is transporting his prisoner Daisy Domergue back to town to be hung for various crimes. At the trading post the three men find four more men holding up to wait out the snow. But not everyone is who they say they are and by the end of the night the snow will run red with blood...   But before we get there we have a lot to listen to, because this is a Tarantino film and he's got a lot to say, a hell of a lot to say. That's not necessarily a bad thing when you write as well as he does, but he's certainly trying everyone's patience with this one and I couldn't help thinking if he'd cut half an hour out of it, you wouldn't have noticed. The first hour is the slow build up as our first four characters get to know one another and bicker and talk. The second hour see the introduction of four new friends who have stuff to say before the final act can arrives in a balls-out gun-battle with so much gore and blood that you're sure to feel as if you need to clean your eyeballs in case some of the gore got stuck. This isn't vintage Tarantino, it's flabby, ridiculously gory and staggeringly violent, particularly towards women who all suffer very badly in this film. And then there's the use of the 'N' word which gets used so often that it starts to jar and pulls you out of the film every time it's uttered. On the plus side, it's funny, intense, shot in 70mm and looking staggering gorgeous, this is a hard film to watch, but I kinda dug it, I just don't know if I'd rush to see it again. 8/10