The Hateful Eight Roadshow Review: Hang er' High.

Would you pay $15 for a taste of the soundtrack and no ads? I'd pay $30. That's heaven to me.

Before it's release Thursday, The Hateful Eight is showing at about 40 major cities in 70 mm film. One of those theaters happened to be close to me (for once) and after 3 and a half hours I walked out of the theater breathless. H8 is so many things. A gritty western, a locked room mystery, and treatise on post civil war racial politics. I had a total fu^&ing blast. It should have been a sloppy disaster. It's bloody finale should have been overwrought and embarrassing.

But just like the vast majority of Tarantino joints; the acting is so good and the dialogue so funny and meaningful, you just don't see it for it's flaws. Because this movie is built around a vast web of total coincidences that just don't add up to anything but the most dramatic situation possible. And that's fine. I could watch Samuel Jackson yell at and torture a confederate general all. Day. Long.

He's a national treasure and he knows it.

The plot starts simple. A ex union cavalry man turned bounty hunter (Jackson) happens upon a stage coach carrying another bounty hunter (Kurt Russel in a mustache to end all mustaches) chained to Daisy Domergue. A woman with a bounty of $10,000 who he means to bring in alive. In order to escape a blizzard they make their way to a road house to wait it out. Chaos, of course, eventually ensues. Unsettling, bloody, laugh till' you cry, chaos.

The plot and it's twists are essential to loving this movie so I'll keep my mouth shut. Every actor gives 100% and you won't see the end coming. Trust me on that. Though I will say the monologue leading up to the film's intermission had me cackling and the audience applauding.

You can't put a score, or a price, on a movie that gets a room full of strangers that riveted. Let me be clear, it was a damn fine film. But someone needed to tell Quinton to cut 20 minutes. There's too many loving shots of Wyoming mountains and stage coaches. Seriously, those sequences last 8 minutes each. And I'm actually a big fan of the little time waster scenes here and there. Kurt Russel making coffee or Walton Goggins staking a guide rope to the outhouse in a blizzard, drew me in more than not. Your mileage may very.

Don't expect a masterpiece. Expect something funny, thought provoking, and fiercely unique.

Shut the door!!!!!