“You need to do three Westerns to call yourself a Western director. Any less, you are just dabbling in the genre” two-time Golden Globe-winner Quentin Tarantino recently told the HFPA. That would make The Hateful Eight the middle film of a trilogy which the director hinted may well be in the works. Hateful, of course, follows the Golden Globe-winning Django Unchained (2013) which, as Kurt Russell points out could more accurately be termed a “Southern”. The actor, part of Hateful’s stellar cast, told the HFPA that this film is a “straight true Western”, albeit in the incomparable Tarantino style. It is also a riveting and bloody companion piece to Django that sets its tale of lies and deceit against the backdrop of racial relations in the wake of the Civil War. An effort perhaps, as Tarantino says, to make “Western films that are a testament to their time.” We spoke about it with Russell, Samuel Jackson, Jennifer Jason Leigh and Channing Tatum.

Luca Celada