The Hateful Eight: 8 Reasons It's Quentin Tarantino's Best Film Since Pulp Fiction

6. It Has A Clear, Complex Point To Make

The best banner term to describe Tarantino's films post-Jackie Brown would be "revenge" - each one hinges on the victim striking back against their oppressor (always someone who is both tied directly to them and represents wider persecution, making the big personal), resulting in some very bloody payback. And while this does form an unexpected, more metaphorical part of The Hateful Eight, it goes beyond the simple catharsis of blowing a persecutor's brains out. Set in the years following the American Civil War and featuring Confederate veterans trapped in a room with a black bounty hunter, the film deals rather heavily with racial prejudice and how it permeates through society into entirely unrelated events. This has been something ticking underneath Tarantino's films for a while, coming to the surface in Inglourious and forming the heart of Django, but here it's brought to an alternate, more complex conclusion. We get the expected N-word spouting vitriol and violence, but that comes at a very clearly defined mid-point (and even then it has some elements of moral disquiet to it); what follows presents things in a less black-and-white way, with societal concerns and actual redemption worked in. That's keeping it as vague as possible, but suffice to say the ending note is more powerful than just the morally "right" things playing out.