With a blizzard on its heels, a stagecoach carrying John "The Hangman" Ruth (a brilliantly gruff performance by Kurt Russell) and his prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) makes for Red Rock, so that Ruth can collect the bounty on Daisy and watch her hang, as his nickname suggests. On the roadside they encounter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) who is stranded with three bounties of his own, albeit all dead, and Ruth reluctantly allows Major Warren to hitch a ride with them. Along the way they encounter yet another wayward traveler, Sheriff Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), also on his way to Red Rock.
Seeking shelter from the storm, these strange bedfellows meet four more suspicious characters at Minnie's Haberdashery, General Sandy Smithers (Bruce Dern), Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth), Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), and Bob (Demian Bichir), what follows is more a locked room mystery of the Agatha Christie variety than a western. Nevertheless, a compelling and well written mystery which reaches all the way back to the origin of racial tension in America: the Civil War era and explores the subtext of our current tensions involving unarmed blacks being killed by police officers every other day within that setting. It's also damn entertaining. With the exception of a certain scene where Major Warren describes in great detail the humiliation he subjected General Sandy Smithers' son to before killing him, which I think is a hallmark Tarantino overindulgence, especially in a film that clocks in at over 3 hours, I can't help but recommend this film.
P.S. It's too late now, but if you had the chance to see the 70mm roadshow version, then you saw it the right way.
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