As far as I’m concerned, had director/writer Quentin Tarantino retired after releasing the terrific one-two punch of Reservoir Dogs (1992) and Pulp Fiction (1994), he’d be assured a place in the pantheon of great movie makers.

Which is a nice way of saying that I feel his works after that point have been, in my humble opinion, hit and miss.  Understand, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Mr. Tarantino gives it his all with each new film and tries very hard to deliver something unique and new and as entertaining as it is thought provoking.

Following Pulp Fiction, Mr. Tarantino made Jackie Brown (1997), Kill Bill Vol 1 and 2 (2003, 2004), Death Proof (2007), Inglourious Basterds (2009), Django Unchained (2012), and, of course, the subject of this review, The Hateful Eight.

That makes eight films Mr. Tarantino has made and of those, the only one I have yet to see, despite owning the BluRay, is Inglourious Basterds.  Of the ones that remain on the list following Pulp Fiction, would it surprise you if I said that while each film has their good and bad, the one I like the most is the one that I only liked the last half of it?

I’m referring to the SECOND half of Death Proof, which I thought was balls-to-the-walls terrific.  Funny, action filled, suspenseful, and with an ending that had me cheering.  But that movie’s first half, up until Stuntman Mike makes his first killing, was awful and, even worse, completely unnecessary.  Cut that whole first half of the film out and watch the second half alone and you have Mr. Tarantino’s best work since those first two films, IMHO.

Still, though I don’t care completely for Jackie Brown (a movie many feel is Mr. Tarantino’s best work but one I found carried a too-hard-to-ignore big plot hole that destroys, to me, the entire story), Kill Bill (If I want to see a film that tries to mimic the thematic awe of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly I’ll just go see The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly), and Django Unchained (for me the film was enjoyable until the point where a character had the choice to hold his nose and shake a villain’s hand to end things amicably…and chooses not to.  Just shake his freaking hand you idiot!!!!), I nonetheless will repeat what I said above: You cannot fault Mr. Tarantino for trying his best to create movies that are a step above your regular popcorn fare.

With The Hateful Eight, Mr. Tarantino returns to the western though this film is very different from his other western, Django Unchained.  Like many of his other films, Mr. Tarantino is playing with well established genres and story conventions.  In this case, the biggest one he appropriates is mystery writer Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians aka And Then There Were None.

In that famous novel, a group of (we soon find) despicable people with dark secrets buried in their individual closets are brought together on a remote island under false pretenses.  When the boat that takes them to that distant island departs, they are left stranded and suddenly, one by one, are murdered.  Who among them is a killer?

In The Hateful Eight, bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth (Kurt Russell) is in the process of taking his latest fugitive capture, Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the town of Red Rock so he can get his reward and see her hang.  The stagecoach carrying him and his prisoner are trying to beat a fast approaching blizzard but nonetheless pick up two passengers along the way, Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), a fellow bounty hunter who doesn’t particularly care about bringing his prisoners back alive, and Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), a man who claims he’s heading to Red Rock to become its sheriff.

John Ruth is suspicious of the two and fears they may be in cahoots with his prisoner and/or might try to take her for themselves as she has a very high price on her head.  Ultimately Ruth allows the two to share his stagecoach but they are only able to make it to Minnie’s Haberdashery, a cabin in the middle of nowhere, before the blizzard hits.

Within the Haberdashery are four other curious characters and Ruth senses things are not what they seem.

Spoiler alert: They’re not.

I won’t get into much more spoilery material from here on in and focus on my feelings about this film.

Again, it was clear Mr. Tarantino was giving this movie his all and the first forty or so minutes of it, roughly to the point shortly after the group makes it to the Haberdashery, were intriguing, suspenseful, humorous, and odd…but in a very good way.

And then came “that” scene and, frankly, things went downhill from there.

“That” scene, which I will describe without giving too much away, involves Samuel L. Jackson’s “conversation” with General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern).  Unlike everything that happened before, that scene felt forced, as if Mr. Tarantino had this great idea and was determined to use it in this movie.  However, when all is said and done this scene, and indeed the character of Smithers, could and perhaps should -especially after all the revelations are made- been cut out of the film entirely.

Part of the problem is that I believe Mr. Tarantino made an understandable mistake when he cast Bruce Dern in the role.  I’m a HUGE fan of Bruce Dern’s impressive body of movie work and in many features he played the crazed baddie to perfection.  Unfortunately, at this time Mr. Dern is a very old and frail man and no longer looks like the menacing baddie of his younger days.  I suspect Mr. Tarantino was hoping for that Bruce Dern in this movie but instead got a man who is always in a chair, never gets up, and looks as menacing as a cotton ball.  When the scene involving Mr. Dern plays out to its conclusion, I grew to loathe Samuel L. Jackson’s character and view him as a coward, something you may not want to do when dealing with your movie’s lead character.

And yes, I know the movie is called The Hateful Eight and not The Tolerable Eight or The They’re-Bad-But-Not-So-Bad Eight.

But still.

Sadly, from that point on the film seemed to lose it for me.  Bothersome little details I could ignore became more prominent.  The big one:  Why have a great actress like Jennifer Jason Leigh in the film and then have her do essentially nothing for 4/5ths of the movie’s bloated 3 hour runtime except get beaten around mercilessly or have blood splattered on her a la Bruce Campbell in the Evil Dead movies?  Instead of wasting time on Bruce Dern’s unnecessary character arc, why not find more interesting things for her to do?

And when all was revealed toward the end (and again I’ll try to tiptoe around spoilers here), the fact of the matter is the bad guy(s) were an incredibly inept bunch.

I could go on and on but I truly don’t want to reveal more spoilers.

Despite a great start, a great cast of characters, and incredible cinematography, I can’t recommend The Hateful Eight except to those who love the films of Quentin Tarantino.  You may find more in there to love than the average movie goer but for me this was a film that could have used a little more script work.

The Hateful Eight is certainly not a disaster of a film, but it is one that could -and should- have been better.