After a very troubled development thanks to a leaked script and the film being prematurely cancelled we were finally gifted last Christmas with the 8th film by Quentin Tarantino, The Hateful Eight. Today the second western by the director hits Blu-ray and for film fans looking to catch up on one of the best films last year or to complete their Tarantino filmography, now’s your time to pick up this great title and spend a little more time at Minnie’s.

Like Reservoir Dogs, the bulk of The Hateful Eight transpires in a single location, Minnie’s Haberdashery during a blizzard in a post-Civil War Wyoming. The weather has brought together a cast of characters only Quentin Tarantino could conjure up for a engrossing whodunit that will leave you scratching your head until the final bloody act. The gist of things is the bounty hunter John Ruth (Kurt Russell) is hoping to weather the storm with his latest bounty Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) worth $10,000, who is on her way to hang in Red Rock for murder. The problem is one of the eight inhabitants of the Haberdashery is looking to do anything they can to free Daisy including killing anyone that gets in their way.


It’s a tense 3 hours as the layers are slowly pulled away and we find out just who is in cahoots with Domergue as John Ruth and fellow bounty hunter Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) just want to make it through the storm alive. The rogues gallery of the Eight includes such Tarantino favorites as Tim Roth as Oswaldo Mobray, the new hangman at Red Rock; Michael Madsen as Joe Gage, a quiet cowboy travelling to visit his mother; Bruce Dern as Sanford Smithers, a former Confederate general and Demián Bichir as Bob the Mexican, the current caretaker of the Haberdashery. When everyone is capable of murder, it makes it just that much harder to find out just who’s to blame as our weary travelers start dropping like flies.

This was my third time watching The Hateful Eight, since I had caught it twice in its Roadshow Incarnation and like Dogs it’s a film that gets better once you’re in on the twist and begin to work backwards picking up on the clues. The script here, which was slightly modified from the version previously leaked has only been refined and polished by Tarantino with the extra time to hone the final act. Like most Tarantino films pulling from countless influences The Hateful Eight still manages to feel like one of the more original entries in his filmography with more subtle call backs than we are normally accustomed to. I personally think its one of his better films to date given the nearly flawless script, the less obtrusive references and the colorful cast of characters who manage to make easy work of that dense dialog while being instantly memorable with their performances.



The image quality here on the Blu-ray is simply stunning, with the clarity you have come to expect from IMAX films. You can also see there was a conscious effort not to clean the image up too much and leave a film-like look on the disc with a very fine visible grain. (Feel free to click on an image to get a preview) The film is presented in its original 2:76:1 aspect ratio which only highlights the 70mm cinematography in the film used to capture the snow filled landscapes and some pretty imposing close-ups when characters are delivering that patented Tarantino dialog. Its seems like a strange choice at first to use this super-wide format for a film that essentially takes place in one location, but it adds tremendously to the overall cinematic feel of the film since its dials back the claustrophobia a bit and instead allows you to see everything Minnie’s Haberdashery has to offer.

The included extras are the only place where I have to say I was disappointed with this release. I kind of figured the Roadshow version would not be included, but I was really hoping for the live performance of the script the cast did as a special one off event when the film was still cancelled. The version of the film presented here is the one released to theaters after the limited engagement, which is a few minutes shorter and missing the overture and the intermission from the Roadshow edition. You do however, get Beyond the Eight: A Behind the Scenes Look which is a brief look at the making of the film and Sam Jackson’s Guide to Glorious 70mm, which was previously released on YouTube in anticipation for the Roadshow Release.


While the film alone makes this package worth picking up given it’s one of the director’s best, I do have to say I would have liked a bit more as far as extras to make this a must-own. Given the effort that went into bringing this particular film to the screen, both with the script leak, filming on a virtually extinct format and retrofitting 300 theaters to THEN to run that format; it would have been great to have more time spent on those aspects of production. With how great the film is and the lengths traveled to match that with an equally engaging experience it would have been great to have better documented that journey to make this release a must-own. I mean, I still think every Tarantino fan will still pick this up just to revisit this great flick, but like its theatrical release, presentation here is key and I think this film deserved a bit more.