A surprising breath of raucous fresh air in 2008 at the height of the South Korean genre renaissance, The Good, the Bad, the Weird was marketing as an instant cult item and pretty much delivered on that front. As you'd expect from the title, it's essentially a variation on the Sergio Leone formula and marked quite a shift for director Kim Jee-woon in between his landmark horror films, A Tale of Two Sisters and I Saw the Devil. Weirdly, it's also the closest thing to his one Hollywood film, 2013's The Last Stand, and since then it's remained a fan favorite with multiple home video options out there.

In the Manchurian desert at the end of the 1930s, nefarious bandit Park Chang-yi (A Bittersweet Life's Byung-hun) is sent to swipe a map being transported via train by hijacking it with the carrier, a Japanese official, on board. His plan is stymied by the presence of irascible thief Yoon Tae-goo (Parasite's Kang-ho), which leads to a major body count and the involvement of bounty hunter Park Do-won (Cold Eyes' Woo-sung). An escalating number of armies and bandits are drawn into the skirmish over the map which seems to lead to some sort of treasure, though what it is will be revealed only via a number of frenetic pursuits across the land.

Energetic and easily carried nicely by its three charismatic leads, The Good, the Bad, the Weird certainly tips its hat to Leone in theory including the obligatory three-guy showdown sequence and combat scenes with lots of extras scattering across the screen. Visually though it's a totally different beast, tossing aside Leone's formal precision in favor of the more loose, chaotic visual style common at the time complete with some flashy CGI augmentations that don't really spoil things. It's all essentially an action-packed exercise in style for its own sake, but the novelty of the time setting and engaging personalities at its core pull you in for the elaborate treasure hunt at its heart. That quality also helped it make a splash internationally followed its much-touted premiere at Cannes as an in-progress cut that was eventually honed into the familiar international and extended Korean versions we have today. In this case, longer isn't necessarily better; the extra five minutes or so beefing up the independence fighters drags out the resolution of the film quite a bit and slows down the pace significantly. It's worth checking out both versions to see the extra material, but first-time viewers should definitely go with the international cut first.

That latter version (with the director's preferred ending) has appeared on video in the U.S. on Blu-ray and DVD from IFC and on DVD and Blu-ray in the U.K. from Tartan and Icon, the latter censored to remove three horse tripwire shots per BBFC guidelines. In early 2025, Arrow Video brought a very deluxe two-disc limited edition to Blu-ray with a ton of special features, followed later in the year by a UHD option (with the second Blu-ray of bonus features included) in both the U.S. and U.K. (The Blu-ray option in America still remains only the IFC as of this writing.) Both the international and Korean cuts are included on the UHD via seamless branching, and the DTS-HD MA 7.1 mix sounds great with lots of immersive sound effects and bombastic music using all of the channels effectively. Optional English subtitles are also included. Anyone who saw the film theatrically probably noticed that it was part of a wave of films (many still continuing today) that were shot on 35mm film but finished as a 2K digital intermediate. The UHD looks substantially better than any option we've had before with an incredible color spectrum and extremely good detail when it comes to actors' faces and hair as well as clothing and other tactile elements. As it did theatrically, the film looks rougher in some of the bright outdoor shots when the now-dated nature of the source kicks in which introduces some baked-in haloing around hair and clothing in medium shots. It's undoubtedly the best the film could look, so bear that in mind while watching. Unlike the U.K. UHD, the U.S. one is also completely uncut.

The UHD also comes with a short intro by the director (1m29s) about the essential idea behind his "kimchi western," plus a thorough new audio commentary by critics James Marsh and Pierce Conran examining the director's trademarks, the film's place in the South Korean modern wave, the backgrounds of the actors, the ties to Leone, and plenty more. That track was recorded for the international cut, which also ports over the fun archival commentary with the director and three leads. The Korean cut features an archival track for the film's domestic release featuring the director, cinematographer Lee Mogae, lighting director Oh Seung-chul, and art director Cho Hwa-sun going into the technical nuts and bolts of putting the film together.

The Blu-ray (which is Region A in the U.S. and Region B in the U.K.) kicks off with a new Jee-woon interview, "Corralling Chaos in the Desert" (25m56s), covers the inspiration he got from the Korean classic Break Up the Chain, the idea of choosing Japanese-controlled Manchuria as a setting, the reason for going with the treasure map concept, and the "insane attempt" of executing the sprawling, record-breaking epic within the local film industry on what seemed to be an impossible scale. In "Dusty Dust-ups and Sweaty Saddles" (14m51s), martial arts coordinator Jung Doo-hong looks back at the "exhausting" process of making the film with a daunting mixture of horses, actors, technological equipment, cars, and other elements that could all go wrong at any moment. Then a section of archival extras in SD from past releases features a "Running Fast" making-of documentary (90m26s) loaded with production footage and interviews, "The Good, the Bad, the Weird and the Vicious" conversation with the director and cast (18m55s), an "Analogue" featurette (13m36s) on the cinematography, lighting, and stunts, a "Space" featurette (10m29s) on the production design, a "Sound" featurette (10m56s) on the sound design, a movie-to-storyboards comparison (14m15s), a shorter behind-the-scenes featurette (15m3s), two EPK-style making-ofs (3m23s and 1m3s), short interviews with Jee-woon (3m15s), Kang-ho (2m42s), Byung-hun (2m58s), and Woo-sung (2m47s), a Cannes highlight reel (3m2s), a hefty reel of deleted scenes (43m55s) with optional commentary, an alternate 47s scene with commentary, five alternate endings, four trailers (Korean, international, U.S., and U.K.), and an 82-image photo gallery. The set comes with a double-sided fold-out poster with new artwork by Nathanael Marsh (also on the reversible sleeve option with the original poster), three postcard-sized artcards, and a book with essays by Darcy Paquet, Kyu Hyun Kim, Cho Jae-whee, and Ariel Schudson.

Reviewed n September 26, 2025