The Hateful Eight (2015) Quentin Tarantino – Movie Review

Set in a wintry Wyoming in the late 19th Century, we start the film off with ex-Union soldier turned bounty hunter named Major Marquis Warren, who stops a stagecoach in the middle of travel through a desolate mountain pass just ahead of a major snowstorm. On board the stagecoach is a fellow bounty hunter, John ‘The Hangman’ Ruth, who, unlike Marquis, takes his dead-or-alive bounties in while they’re still breathing so they will be hanged at the public square. The other passenger is one of those bounties Ruth is taking in to Red Rock, a racist spitfire named Daisy Domergue. A little further, they reluctantly pick up another passenger, Chris Mannix, who claims that he’s set to become the new sheriff of Red Rock upon arrival, and to whom they would collect their rewards.

The quartet, along with stagecoach driver O.B., are forced to shelter from the blizzard at a secluded tavern called Minnie’s Haberdashery, where they meet a new collection of interesting people, including a Mexican, Bob, who is tending the needs of the place while Minnie is away, a former Confederate general named Sandy Smithers, a drifter named Joe Gage, who says he’s there to visit his mother for the holidays, and Oswaldo Mobray, and a man claiming to be the hangman who is traveling to Red Rock to put a noose on Daisy Domergue. Ruth begins to become convinced that one (or perhaps more) of the men in the group is actually there to help Daisy escape, which, if true, means there’s going to be a violent confrontation about to go down at the Haberdashery if he’s not rooted out before the plan is hatched.