the piece plays like a weird combination of John Ford's Stagecoach, Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians and Jean-Paul Sartre's No Exit, albeit with a word count closer to Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh
The Hateful Eight doesn't have enough ideas. Set almost entirely in a snowed-in saloon, the story's so spare it doesn't warrant either its three-hour running time or his use of 70mm projection. It's narratively and visually claustrophobic
no matter how absorbing its individual scenes, however, "The Hateful Eight" is often hindered by Tarantino's confidence in the material. For every gripping sequence, there's an abrupt development or undercooked throwaway line
"The Hateful Eight" may frustrate some of his more literally sanguine supporters, but it's nonetheless an entertaining piece of dialogue-driven theater - with the occasional rifle-shot to the head
by Peter Bradshaw [The Guardian ]
