Starring Jennifer Jason Leigh. Rated 18S.

Get past the buckets and buckets of blood in The Hateful Eight, and there’s a good argument to be made that—once the shock value has worn off—this is Quentin Tarantino at his most philosophical and clever.

Over the course of a three-hour run time (including an extended overture and 12-minute intermission), Hollywood’s most colourful provocateur gives us a laundry list of big things to think about. Set in an Old West unforgiving enough to make Sam Peckinpah look like a pacifist, Tarantino’s eighth film has him ruminating on everything from the perversity of the justice system to the blinding power of celebrity to the corrupting nature of money.

And—despite dropping enough N-bombs to make Spike Lee apoplectic—it’s about a system of deeply ingrained racism that continues to plague the U.S. today. Witness how retired Union soldier turned bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson at his slow-simmering best) gets zero respect from the whites he interacts with until he produces a personal letter from Abraham Lincoln.

Those expecting the double-caffeinated sprawling chaos of Pulp Fiction or Django Unchained will need to adjust their expectations for The Hateful Eight. Despite being shot in old-school 70mm, this is Tarantino’s most intimate film since Reservoir Dogs. He seems more interested in building tension among his main characters, the best of whom are a belligerent retired Confederate general (Bruce Dern), a philosophical English hangman (Tim Roth), and a perpetually bloody-nosed prisoner with a bounty on her head (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

To give away anything more is to spoil a captivating exercise in cabin-fever claustrophobia where, once you get beyond a frozen snow-covered surface, nothing is quite what it seems. Including, Tarantino suggests, the United States of America, which is as ugly to its bloody core today as it was back when the West smelled like spilled whiskey and acrid gunpowder. The greatest thing about The Hateful Eight? Amidst the bullets and bloodshed is a movie that mostly wants to make you think.