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Here's something you don't see too often: A critic who's indifferent about a Quentin Tarantino movie.
For all his many talents as a voracious scholar of genres who can pack a dozen references to old movies in every frame of film, Tarantino is also great at pushing critics' buttons with his penchant for bloody violence and his confrontational use of the N-word.
Surely, there are plenty of bullets and gratuitous racial slurs sent flying around Tarantino's latest movie, "The Hateful Eight" — along with mistreatment of the most prominent female character that some critics have branded misogynistic. But for me, the movie itself, like Tarantino's defiant posturing and the pearl-clutching reactions, are feeling like warmed-over Christmas leftovers.
Set in Wyoming in the 1880s (and, supposedly, in the same universe as Tarantino's last movie, "Django Unchained"), "The Hateful Eight" starts with one bounty hunter asking another bounty hunter for a ride. Maj. Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) has three deceased felons in his possession, and asks for help from the passenger of the approaching stagecoach: John "The Hangman" Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is transporting the most-wanted killer Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to face justice.
"When the handbill says 'dead or alive,' the rest of us just shoot you in the back from up on top a perch somewhere and bring you in dead over a saddle," Maj. Warren explains to another passenger, sheriff-to-be Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins). "But when John Ruth catches you, you hang."
There's plenty of tension in the coach, between Daisy and her captor, and between Warren and Mannix — who are, respectively, an ex-slave and a former Confederate officer. The N-word gets dropped many times by the time the coach arrives at Minnie's Haberdashery, the only shelter on the trail as a blizzard approaches.
Ruth and Warren are surprised to find Minnie gone, but four other characters in her place: Cowpuncher Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), hangman-for-hire Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), retired Confederate Gen. Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), and Señor Bob (Demian Bichir), a Mexican.
The cast — a mix of Tarantino veterans (Jackson, Russell, Roth and Madsen) and first-timers — clearly relish chewing on Tarantino's archly verbose writing. Leigh, especially, shines as the thoroughly disreputable Daisy, who spits out insults like a pro and wears the marks of Ruth's abuse like battle scars.
As the claustrophobia of the room closes in (making Tarantino's much-publicized use of 70mm Ultra Panavision cameras and film a little unnecessary), Warren suspects someone isn't who they say they are. The rest of the movie plays out in this snowbound room, much like an Agatha Christie mystery — or, more deliberately, like the finale of Tarantino's debut, "Reservoir Dogs."
Therein lies the problem with "The Hateful Eight": It feels like Tarantino, who delights in dropping references from other movies, has finally circled around to steal from his own.
Twitter: @moviecricket —
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'The Hateful Eight'
Dangerous strangers meet in a snowbound cabin, in Quentin Tarantino's derivative Western.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Wednesday, Dec. 30.
Rating • R for strong bloody violence, a scene of violent sexual content, language and some graphic nudity.
Running time • 167 minutes.