Caught an early showing of Quentin Tarrentino’s new movie The Hateful 8 – a kind of locked-room pot-boiler of a western. Eight people in the old west are snowed in during a blizzard and tensions run hot and dialog and blood runs freely as they suspiciously feel each other out. It’s kind of a really talking, really violent Agatha Christie movie.

It’s also, in my estimation, one of Tarrentino’s lesser movies… which isn’t to say it’s bad… it’s just kind of fizzles out near the end and I left the theater saying, “So what?” What was the point of any of that… it failed to nail the ending which went on far too long without any real pay off. In fact, the second half of the movie isn’t nearly as strong, in general, as the first half.

Like any Tarrantino movie, this is a very dialog heavy drama/comedy and, for the most part, that works very well. It drives the drama, it turns the screw, and it makes you laugh and maybe even gasp. And then comes peppered extremely bloody violence and gore. This worked and it worked very well through the majority of the movie. This movie is almost 3 hours long but if you like Tarrantino’s indulgence in his dialog, it’s great. And if the movie had actually landed its ending, this would be one of the best movies of the year. As it is, it’s fine but just ultimately empty.

So there you go – a perfectly good movie, especially if you like Tarrantino… but hardly one of his best. It sustains its dialog heavy run time until it doesn’t… which isn’t a problem with the actors but with a story that ultimately just doesn’t seem to know where to go in the end. I was disappointed but that still makes this a good flick. If you like hyper-talky, hyper-violent Tarrantino flicks, of course.

Score: 84