The Hateful Eight - Blu-ray

Film: After the huge success of Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino has stayed true to the Western genre for his eighth feature film. But while there may be some minor parallels as a result, the films couldn't be more different. For The Hateful Eight is first and foremost a chamber play carried by its dialogue and its great ensemble, which takes place almost exclusively in a carriage and then in a small goods store. Only occasionally is the action taken outside, where images of snowy Colorado (which served as a stand-in for Wyoming) provide moments of breathtaking beauty.

The story of the nearly three-hour film is very simple: bounty hunter John The Hangman Ruth (Kurt Russell) wants to bring prisoner Daisy Domergue (Jennifer Jason Leigh) to the town of Red Rock. With an ominous blizzard breathing down her neck, Ruth picks up Major Marquis Warren (Samuel L. Jackson) and Southern deserter Chris Mannix (Walton Goggins), who pretends to be the new sheriff of Red Rock, along the way. Together, they make it as far as Minnie's small goods store before the blizzard catches up with them. Here they must now wait out the storm with Mexican Bon (Demian Bichir), cowboy Joe Gage (Michael Madsen), Confederate general Sandford Smithers (Bruce Dern), and executioner Oswaldo Mobray (Tim Roth). But in the supposed shelter of the little shop, it is revealed more and more that the eight strangers have not met here entirely by chance - and that certain death awaits some of them in here.

The Hateful Eight is typical Tarantino, especially in its final act. When the whole thing culminates in a gloriously over-the-top bloodbath after almost two hours of almost exclusively talking, the master truly hits his stride. But even in the two hours before that, the film has a very high entertainment value. Despite the rather chamber-play-like staging, the work never feels like a filmed play. Tarantino proves to have a real knack for pulling visually quite great cinematic quality out of very cramped spaces. And even if the dialogues don't belong to the best he has written so far, they are full of wit and profundity as one is used to from him. And when they're delivered as wonderfully as they are by this excellent ensemble, it's just really good fun.

Of course, as is often the case, Tarantino can be accused of just cobbling together set pieces from other films. When a murder happens in the middle of a group of (supposedly) strangers, it reminds a lot of the detective novels of Agatha Christie. And very loosely interpreted there are even parallels to another movie with Kurt Russell, in which he - completely snowed in - had to find out who of the people around him is lying and is a deadly danger. We're talking, of course, about the horror classic The Thing From Another World, from which Tarantino seems to have at least borrowed the claustrophobic atmosphere. There are numerous other aspects of the film in which one could see obvious sources of inspiration. However, as with his earlier films, Tarantino can't be accused of simply delivering a cheap plagiarism and cribbing his story together. Rather, you can tell in every second of the film how much Quentin Tarantino loves cinema and how perfectly he knows how to pay tribute to all his great idols.

This is already clear by the fact that he managed to get old master Ennio Morricone to compose a new film score for him. But the images, shot in 70mm on real film, are also an impressive and also beautiful testament to Tarantino's love of cinema. Visually, The Hateful Eight is truly a masterpiece. Dramaturgically, on the other hand, it may not be the best of Tarantino's eight directorial efforts to date. But even with some lengths and a certain recognition value of the story (at least until the last act), the film is still quite great entertainment cinema. And for that, then, there is also - with small deductions in the B grade - the top rating: absolutely worth seeing!!!

Picture + Sound: The Hateful Eight is indeed made for the big screen. But also in the home theater, the film can inspire on the Blu-ray with its great images. This is ensured by a high level of image sharpness, an atmospheric colour scheme and a pleasant picture depth. The sound is dominated by the dialogue for long stretches, but even in the quieter moments, the DTS-HD 5.1 MA mix provides a decent workload for the surround channels. Very Good.

Extras: Unfortunately, there are only two extras on the Blu-ray: a behind-the-scenes look (approx. 4:58 min.) and a featurette on the magic of 70mm (approx. 7:32 min.). For a blockbuster like this, that's really arguably weak.

Conclusion: The Hateful Eight may not be Quentin Tarantino's best film, but it is definitely another entertaining testament to his love of cinema and talent for great dialogue. The Blu-ray impresses with very good picture and sound quality, only disappointing in the bonus material, which is just 13 minutes long. But for the main film alone, there is a clear: Recommended!

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp