Tarantino's latest feature is a ride to nowhere

TWO bounty hunters take refuge in a remote cabin in Wyoming, where assorted gunslingers and ornery outlaws are also holed up. Deep conversation breaks out. Welcome to The Hateful Eight, Quentin Tarantino's shaggy-dog tale set in the Old West, where everyone has something to hide, and plenty to say.

Over-the-top violence is never too far behind the extended dialogue in a Tarantino film so there will be blood - buckets of it - in this long-winded, self-indulgent exercise that serves as the director's eighth feature. After taking on noirish crime thrillers, wuxia classics, slavery in the Deep South and dastardly Nazis in the past, he introduces us to the pulp Western.

Much of the filmmaker's appeal lies in the fact that convention matters little in the Tarantino oeuvre, where lengthy discourses on bigotry, racism, biblical verses and civil liberties can pop up at any time. As is Tarantino's way, why say in one sentence what you can say in 10? This is someone who dances to his own tune - even if he does get composer Ennio Morricone to help out with the music score this time.