Although it’s technically a western, The Hateful Eight is so intense that by the final act, it becomes the closest thing Quentin Tarantino has made to a horror film. It has enough blood and gore and twists and turns to be considered an all-out chiller, while its mystery story follows the vague outline of a whodunit.
Tarantino went through his contact list and pulled out his most frequent collaborators to play the mysterious characters of The Hateful Eight. The cast members all gave terrific performances, but some were greater than others. So, here are all the major performances in The Hateful Eight, ranked.
James Parks As O.B.
James Parks isn’t a bad actor, but he does give the least memorable performance in The Hateful Eight, because he’s given very limited material in the minor role of O.B., the stagecoach driver hired by John Ruth to navigate the blizzard.
He’s not one of the titular eight, and once he’s gotten John Ruth’s stagecoach up to Minnie’s Haberdashery, his role in the plot has been fulfilled, but he has nowhere to go. The poisoned coffee pot was a convenient way to get him out of the story.
Channing Tatum As Jody Domergue
Channing Tatum shows up halfway through The Hateful Eight to shoot Major Warren in the crotch from under the floorboards. He’s revealed to be Daisy’s brother who’s been waiting for the right opportunity to strike.
At first, it was a fun surprise that Tatum was playing Jody (even though there’d been rumors that Tatum was in the film, and eagle-eyed viewers would’ve spotted his name in the opening titles two hours earlier), but beyond that, the presence of a popular A-lister was just distracting.
Michael Madsen As Joe Gage
Tarantino always gives Michael Madsen some cool dialogue to deliver, and he always aces it with perfectly placed pauses and off-camera glances throughout his line deliveries.
Joe Gage is easily the least developed character in The Hateful Eight’s ensemble — the extended cut of the film released on Netflix mostly added scenes expanding on his characterization — but Madsen still has a lot of fun with the role.
Kurt Russell As John “The Hangman” Ruth
After playing a murderous stunt driver for Quentin Tarantino in Death Proof, Kurt Russell portrayed the bounty hunter John “The Hangman” Ruth in The Hateful Eight.
His thick Southern accent and mustache-twirling are a little heavy-handed, but there’s still plenty of fine acting in this performance, such as the look of horror in his eyes as he realizes he’s been poisoned, or when he reads Major Warren’s forged Lincoln letter and sheds a tear.
Demián Bichir As Bob
When Tarantino told his friend Robert Rodriguez that he’d written a Mexican character and asked him to recommend an actor, the first name that came up was Demián Bichir. Rodriguez had worked with the Oscar-nominated charmer on Machete Kills.
In The Hateful Eight, Bichir is relegated to the role of comic relief, which doesn’t give him an awful lot to work with, but he still knocks all of his lines out of the park with hilarious delivery. Particularly, his pronunciation of the word “cabrón” never fails to get a laugh.
Tim Roth As Oswaldo Mobray
Regular Tarantino cohort Tim Roth channeled British character actor Terry-Thomas in the role of Oswaldo Mobray. He successfully threw viewers — and the other characters — off his trail ahead of the big third-act twist.
When he’s revealed to be the outlaw “English Pete” Hicox, it’s surprising to hear that his true accent is a Cockney one, similar to Roth’s voice as Pumpkin in the opening and closing scenes of Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Although his American accent was a little shaky in Reservoir Dogs, Roth never slips out of either of his accents in The Hateful Eight.
Bruce Dern As General Sanford Smithers
As an ex-Confederate general who executed black P.O.W.s at the Battle of Baton Rouge just for the hell of it, General Sanford Smithers is one of the most “hateful” members of the titular group of eight deplorables. Bruce Dern leans into that, especially in the General’s interactions with Samuel L. Jackson’s Major Warren.
Dern’s portrayal of Sanders’ unbridled hate speech gave Jackson the freedom to go all out with glee when Warren details his torture of Sanders’ son. As he tells the story, Sanders is silently seething, and Dern plays it brilliantly.
Walton Goggins As Chris Mannix
Having cast Walton Goggins as the indisputably reprehensible Billy Crash in Django Unchained, Tarantino gave the actor more of a chance to be likable in The Hateful Eight. Chris Mannix shows up on a snowy plain in the middle of nowhere, claiming to be the new sheriff of Red Rock.
Goggins had both moments of comedy, like tossing away the poisoned coffee in a panicked state, and moments of pathos, like defending General Sanders in front of Major Warren, and as usual, he nailed both.
Jennifer Jason Leigh As Daisy Domergue
The only Oscar-nominated performance in The Hateful Eight is delivered by Jennifer Jason Leigh in the role of serial killer Daisy Domergue, the “Susan Atkins of the Wild West.” Leigh played every one of Daisy’s evil grins with a suitable creepiness, but also brought some nuance to her guitar performance.
The violent treatment of Daisy throughout the film proved to be controversial among some viewers, but Leigh did a fantastic job of spewing metaphorical venom with every insult and chastisement that comes out of her mouth.
Samuel L. Jackson As Major Marquis Warren
There are few actors who are more perfectly matched to Tarantino’s directing style than Samuel L. Jackson. His authoritative voice and commanding presence couldn’t be better suited to delivering Q.T.’s unwieldy monologues, while his expressive face makes every closeup on The Hateful Eight’s Ultra Panavision 70 lenses a visual treat.
The role of Major Marquis Warren, a bounty hunter who’s onto the bad guys from the beginning and has a serious violent streak, was the ideal antihero — a tightrope walk of likability (sure, Warren’s bad, but the others are worse) — to make this one of Jackson’s all-time most riveting performances.