Film Review: Tarantino’s bloody latest is a panoramic affair

There’s been lots of chatter about “The Hateful Eight,” Quentin Tarantino’s “chamber Western,” going back to what might be called “pre-pre-production.”

After an early draft of the script was leaked, Tarantino sued and said he wasn’t going to make the film; then he changed his mind and did make it. Here, roughly two years after the leak, the final product is in theaters.

The director has drummed up anticipation by shooting in Ultra Panavision 70, a superduper-widescreen, hi-res format that hasn’t been used in almost 50 years.

The initial few theaters in the release are outfitted to handle this; those bookings will also be shown in imitation of the roadshow films of the ‘50s and ‘60s — with an overture and an intermission. All of this is part of Tarantino’s quest to keep alive the notion of shooting and displaying movies on film (not digital video).

It seems almost perverse that Tarantino has chosen not to make a visually sprawling epic, but rather — much like his budget-constrained “Reservoir Dogs” — to set roughly 80% of the movie inside one big room.

The first shots are of grand vistas, as a stagecoach is seen traveling through a snowy landscape. The coach has been rented by bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell), who is transporting Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the town of Red Rock, where she will be tried for murder and then — foregone conclusion — convicted and hanged. The coach picks up a rival bounty hunter, Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson), and then a former Confederate soldier Chris Maddox (Walton Goggins), both of whom are stranded and facing an upcoming blizzard.

They all take refuge at the only outpost they can reach, Minnie’s Haberdashery, which is, in fact, not a haberdashery, but rather an inn/rest stop. Minnie isn’t there, but Bob the Mexican (Demian Bichir) claims to be looking after the place in her absence. Also at the inn are regional executioner Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), an ancient Confederate officer (Bruce Dern), and the surly, untalkative Joe Gage (Michael Madsen).

Except for a few flashbacks, we never leave the inn for the rest of the movie.

Like most Tarantino films, “The Hateful Eight” riffs on dozens of predecessors. The first part can’t help but invoke John Ford’s “Stagecoach.”

The rest draws on a long tradition of “strangers trapped in a confined space” stories, from “The Petrified Forest, “Key Largo,” “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf,” and (albeit with a totally different tone) “The Big Bus.” The presence of Kurt Russell inevitably triggers memories of John Carpenter’s “The Thing.”

“Kill Bill” represented a leap forward in Tarantino’s visual style, presumably because it was his first movie to use multi-Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson, who’s done brilliant work in an awesome range of projects.

After the story moves inside, Richardson finds beautiful ways to light the confined space. Because of the super-wide image, we are more than usually placed in the room, with the broad image enabling us to keep track of the multiple characters.

This would be a good moment to mention that it’s vastly preferable to see “The Hateful Eight” on a really big screen.

In the case of James Cameron’s 3D “Avatar,” the film lost everything good when seen in 2D. In contrast, “The Hateful Eight” has story, dialogue and characters that will make it worthwhile on your iPad, but the sense of immersion will be significantly curtailed.

Jackson has famously been a part of almost every Tarantino movie, but this is the first time he’s played the protagonist. The word “hero” doesn’t quite fit; Marquis Warren is no less hateful — though a bit more likable — than most of the others.

Leigh gets by far her juiciest part in decades (or maybe ever): Daisy is savage and mean, almost feral in her responses; it’s impossible to feel any remnants of chivalry for her.

As in “Django Unchained,” the stylistic (and time period) clash of Tarantino’s humor and the Western conventions generates a lot of the humor, and despite the excessive bloodletting in the second half, “The Hateful Eight” has a predominantly comic tone.

Unfortunately, like “Django Unchained,” it has stretches in the middle where you mutter to yourself, “C’mon, could we please have less talk and a little more action?”

When the action finally arrives, right before the intermission, it doesn’t stop until the end. It bathes us in explicit, gross-out gore closer to a Robert Rodriguez film than to any Western you’ve ever seen. So, to the squeamish: beware.

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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).