I really liked Django Unchained, or as I like to call it: The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence right through the eyeball and then the bullet continued through about 7 other torsos, shot out from a guy's belly button bringing a plume of intestines with it, ricocheted off someone's jugular vein, then snapped the cord holding up a chandelier causing said chandelier to plummet like a lead balloon, crushing the skulls of various evil varmints and polecats and then plunging into an occupied outhouse where the dynamite was also stored, causing the outhouse to explode in a crimson rain of blood, guts and offal.But I guess all that wouldn't fit on the poster.
Django has everything you'd want in a movie, action, humor, suspense, drama, and even some romance, all washed down with gallons of blood. Did I mention some beautiful western vistas? it's got those too. And there are plenty of refernces to some of the geat westerns of the past, some of them only visual so pay attention. There is the trade mark Tarantino dialogue as well.
I'm sure other reviewers will talk about racial-political implications and social commentary and such. I'm not that smart. I just thought this was a fast paced and satisfying film for movie fans from beginning to end. Leonardo Di Caprio makes for a great villain, keeping himself just this side of over-the-top. Jamie Fox played Django as quiet waters that ran deep but Christopher Walz steals the show, although Samuel L. Jackson almost beat him to it.
All three leading actors were amazing. Fox & Waltz were insanely good. Beautifly shot and a compelling story that I was never quite sure how all would be resolved (other than knowing a bunch a folks were gonna die).
In honor of Roger Ebert, I give it two thumbs up. R.I.P. Mr. Ebert.
Buy Django Unchained (Two-Disc Combo Pack: Blu-ray + DVD + Digital Copy + UltraViolet) (2011) Now
As an avid fan of Quentin Tarantino, there's a level of quality that I expect from each film that he makes. I expect to connect with his characters, but not necessarily like any of them. I expect to see a film that satisfies the film geek in me. More than anything, I expect to see a film that entertains throughout the prerequisite bloated running time."Django Unchained" is nearly three hours long. But it never feels that long, it entertains and surprises every step along the way. When I first checked my watch, we were already two hours into the film. All of Tarantino's films are usually about this long. Tarantino has been having fun with fictionalizing historical periods lately. This started with 2009's "Inglourious Basterds", which was easily one of the best films of that year. My eighty-something year old grandmother, who lived through the time that the film depicted World War II said that if events actually happened as they did in that film, that we would be living in a better world today. I think that's a pretty high compliment, especially since my grandmother is not Tarantino's target audience. He was able to design a great story not an idealistic view of that time period, but still a pretty fascinating one.
"Django" is about slavery...a taboo subject in any film, a strangely popular one, recently, as the same time period is explored in "Lincoln". It's about Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who is bought and then freed by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz, one-upping himself from the fantastic performance he gave in "Basterds"), a dentist turned bounty hunter. White supremacist slave owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) bought and enslaved his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), and Django and Schultz are out to correct the grave injustice done to both of them, and this doesn't mean just capturing and killing Candie, but many others who are responsible for the trauma experienced by Broomhilda.
Christoph Waltz has got to be one of the finest living actors in Hollywood. He's incredibly charismatic, but he cares about his character, first and foremost. As the prime antagonist in "Basterds", he was positively horrifying. In this film, he's the hero, but at the same time, he's anything but that. He brings humor and depth to a character that wouldn't have worked this well otherwise. Jamie Foxx does a good job as well, but I don't necessarily see him winning anything this Oscar season.
I'm half-tempted to call "Django" Quentin Tarantino's superhero movie. Django is by no means that, he's an oppressed figure with no real "super powers", however he's a kick-ass guy who the audience roots for from the very beginning. He even has his own theme song! We don't know how he appears to be more literate than other slaves, and he is somehow always able to outsmart those around him.
"Django" shows Tarantino having slightly more respect for genre than he ever has. It's a western revenge epic, first and foremost. It's also kind of a comedy, with some of the most clever dialogue I've heard in a film in 2012. It's also a romance, displaying the forbidden love between Django and his wife. But it's first and foremost a western, and Tarantino sticks to that.
This film isn't perfect, however. One thing I expect from Tarantino is well-developed strong female characters. We don't have that in "Django". I was hoping that Kerry Washington, who is also badass protagonist Olivia Pope in ABC's "Scandal", would be smart and strong-willed enough to get herself out of the problems which are out of her hands. I was hoping for Tarantino to give her some snappy dialogue, to show that her character is, like Django, superior to all of the other slaves around her. She isn't. She just kind of stands there and whimpers. She's helpless, and I wasn't expecting that from Tarantino, who has written some of the best female protagonists in film.
Other than this, "Django Unchained" is a masterful film. It takes alot for a nearly three hour long film to be engaging the entire way through, and it is. It's wickedly funny, and at the same time, extremely dramatic. With its graphic violence and filthy mouth, it isn't for the faint of heart. All of the actors here, especially DiCaprio, seem to be having tons of fun here, and it shows. Tarantino loves to fictionalize history, and if such films are as good as "Django Unchained", I think he should keep doing it. It's a vision of history that only Tarantino can bring us.
Grade: A-I went into this movie with no expectations. I love a good western style film and Django delivered. There was cheesy 60s/70s music, and violence galore, gun slinging, trash talking, crooked sheriffs, nasty slavers, the works. The overuse of the "N" word was shocking to some, but in that time period it was common, so the usage is historically correct. Tarantino didn't skimp on the violence from the original. In fact, in true 'Kill Bill' style, the blood bath flows like wine at a dinner party. The characters and actors are superb. Sam Jackson is amazing, and Leonardo is a convincing slaver. If you are squeamish and don't want to see a glimpse of how life really was for slaves back then, then don't watch. Though I suggest that anyone who still thinks there are still slave like conditions this day in America should suffer through it.
It is refreshing to see that part of history depicted raw and realistic, untainted with political correctness.
This is how we learn.
While still in theaters, it is available in DVD and Blue Ray at Amazon. Django Unchained [Blu-ray] The minute it is available for download to my Kindle Fire I will add it to my collection.
This remake from the 60s is gritty and violent. 4 stars and recommended. MRDjango Unchained started out great and ended up okay, but somewhere in the middle, it fell a little too in love with itself and the pacing slowed to a crawl. Django is freed and then starts to work with a German bounty hunter, who is a wonderful character. When they go to Candie Land, a plantation where Django's wife is being kept, that's where the movie just fell apart for me. Leo DiCaprio is Candie, and he turns in a good performance, but there's a lot of repetitive dialogue and plodding revelations. Django allows a slave to be torn apart by dogs, which made him an unsympathetic character, whereas before that moment, he was pretty cool. Yes, there's a lot of blood lots of juicy gun fights. Some of it is way over the top, but that's what you expect out of a Tarantino film, so I have no objection to that. The movie is very long and would have been much better about half an hour shorter, but if felt as if Tarantino lost his way and was trying hard to insert tension in the middle, and for me, it just didn't work.
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