Django Unchained

For a film that’s almost three hours long and has already had more words written about it than Quentin Tarantino can speak in 5 minutes, I’ll try and keep this short and sweet (which, ironically, is pretty much the opposite description that can be applied to most QT productions). A quick summation of the plot finds us in 1850’s America where bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) frees slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in order to help him with a mission, before the two team up in order to track down and rescue Django’s wife (Kerry Washington) from plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Back in 2007 Tarantino stated that he wanted to do a film that would deal with America’s slave past but portray it in the manner of a spaghetti western, as opposed to an “issue movie”. Well you can’t deny he hasn’t produced what he was aiming for back then as there’s nothing here that can be taken seriously, including plenty of historical inaccuracies. In respect of how the film actually plays though, the first thing to note is that, unusually for Tarantino, this has quite a linear narrative. However, as we go from scene to scene, there is nothing to get the pulse racing too much and little in the terms of plot twists. What the film comes across as is a collection of acts which have better executed in previous Tarantino productions. A key dinner table scene recalls the Tavern showdown in Inglourious Basterds, but lacks its tension and cat playing with mouse dialogue. An OTT shootout is akin to Uma Thurman’s rumble with the Crazy 88 squad in Kill Bill, but lacks its wit and whip smart direction. Waltz is good, but not a patch on his performance as Hans Landa and so on. It all feels Tarantino-ish, but just not at full throttle (though a scene where the KKK discuss the impracticality of their hoods is QT to the max). The one thing that Tarantino pretty much always delivers on is great performances from his cast. It’s no different here as the majority of the cast are a delight to watch, no doubt aided by QT’s sharply written characters. Plus, if you want further proof of what a farcical waste of time the Oscars are, Waltz swanned off here with an Oscar for his “usual”, albeit good routine, whilst Samuel L. Jackson (stealing the film with an outrageous performance as Candie’s senior house slave) didn’t even get a nomination. A lot has been written about the violence on show, but it’s actually fairly tame with a lot of it being left to the imagination. Sure you can point to the bloodbath at the end, but the ridiculous amount of claret on show easily pushes it into “comic” territory. The film is best summed up by Tarantino’s cameo towards the end. QT’s bad acting has been a running joke for a long time now, but it appears that he doesn’t seem in on it himself. How else to explain his atrocious performance? But this is a key point as to why this film fails to consistently hit high standards. This is self-indulgent Tarantino, which is a step down from his usual quality. You may even half-jokingly ask the question if Tarantino hasn’t just finally scratched his itch of giving us a film that overloads on the N word whilst winding up Spike Lee at the same time.

The OC Film Sting Final Verdict

It’s usually either hit or miss with Tarantino, which makes this film fairly unique as it lands firmly within the pile marked “average”. Rating: 6/10.