No One Comes Up Here Without a Damn Good Reason

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins, Demián Bichir, Tim Roth, Michael Madsen, Bruce Dern, James Parks, Channing Tatum, Dana Gourrier, Zoë Bell, Gene Jones, Lee Horsley

DML Rating: ★★★★★★★★☆☆ - great

"When the handbill says "dead or alive", the rest of us just shoot you in the back from up on top a perch somewhere and bring you in dead over a saddle." - Major Marquis Warren

Why watch this? This film is so close to being a masterpiece, but it's not.

Plot Summary: In post-Civil War Wyoming, a bounty hunter named John Ruth and his prisoner, Daisy Domergue, race through a blizzard towards Red Rock, where Domergue is scheduled to hang. Along the way, they encounter Major Marquis Warren, another bounty hunter, and Chris Mannix, who claims to be the new sheriff of Red Rock. The intensifying blizzard forces the group to take refuge at Minnie's Haberdashery, a stagecoach stopover, where they meet four other strangers, raising suspicions and tensions amongst the group of eight confined individuals.
 

Dad's Preview: This revisionist Western has all the ingredients: a great cast, Tarantino directing, and an engaging plot and script. It does succeed in many areas. Each of the actors capitalize their moment, and SLJ really ups his game. It's wonderfully claustrophobic, and we emotionally feel the time bomb ticking, louder and louder. Plot twists are everywhere. In many ways it's a Civil War allegory, dressed in a 1880's version of The Thing (1982) - an isolated, frozen setting where we're trying to figure out the bad from the really bad (Spoiler - there ain't no good guys). For me personally, Tarantino purposefully put forward too much unnecessary graphic violence and vulgarity. I understand its shock value, but it cheapens the whole effort a bit.

Shiny Penny, FilmColony, Double Feature Films;
The Weinstein Company