Django Unchained 2012

The good, the bad & the Tarantino

adamatdramatrain Flicks Superstar (?)

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If you love Spaghetti Westerns of the Sergio Leone variety then chances are that, like me, you'll dig 'Django Unchained.' Think 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly' - only with Tarantino dialogue and RZA popping up on the soundtrack. As with Quentin Tarantino's 'Inglourious Basterds' this is no history lesson. In fact, 'Django' is about as concerned with historical accuracy as Tarantino is with depicting the consequences of real life violence. We're strictly in 'Kill Bill' territory here - violence is depicted as cool and revenge is the genre of the day.

Just as 'Inglourious Basterds' was a Leone-style Western set in World War II, so 'Django' is a Leone-style Western set in pre-emancipation era USA. It's offensive only if you leave your sense of humour and your expectations of a Tarantino movie at the door. Yes those same old criticisms can be levelled at Tarantino - the desperate-to-be-cooler-than-cool posturing, the gratuitous violence, swearing and a woeful ignoring of political correctness by employing the 'n' word more liberally than The Man With No Name dispatched bullets in Leone's 'Dollars' trilogy. But if you love Tarantino movies, it's a great ride.

This is easily the best looking Tarantino movie yet, with Robert Richardson's cinematography capturing the grandeur of Hollywood's cinematic West. The cast are all solid and even a dire performance by the director himself attempting an Australian accent is wonderfully sent up by an explosive exit. Despite concerns that, following the death of Tarantino's long time collaborator, Sally Menke in 2010, he'd be hard-pressed to find an editor to match his sensibilities, Fred Raskin does a stand-up job, graduating from assisting on 'Kill Bill' in fine style.

Yes some of it is heavy handed, but it's always carried off with aplomb and a tongue-in-cheek flair for cinematic excess that will delight Tarantino fans. The 165-minute running time flies by with no sagging or dragging and the comedic interruptions, such as a Klu Klux Klan skit in which them good ol' boys complain they can't see sh*t through their hoods is worthy of a Wild West as seen through the skewed satire of the likes of Monty Python. For lovers of film trivia there are, as ever in Tarantino, references a-plenty - from the likes of Mel Brooks' 'Blazing Saddles' to just about every Western you've ever (and never) seen.

What's it all about? At one point Christoph Waltz's Dr. King Schultz asks Jamie Foxx's Django: "How do you like the bounty hunting business?" Django replies: "Kill white people and get paid for it? What's not to like?" Just as 'Inglourious Basterds' used Nazis as the bad guys on which to enact a revenge fantasy, so 'Django' uses racists and slave-owners as an excuse to do the same. It's a morality akin to Spielberg and Lucas' in 'Raiders of The Lost Ark,' that harks back to the white and black-hatted morality of early Hollywood Westerns - in which baddies were bad, goodies were good and right reigned victorious in the end - yee-ha!

One of the principal delights of 'Django' is the casting - from the likes of Don Johnson and Jonah Hill, to an appearance by original Django, Franco Nero, the cast are a delight in big and small roles alike. It's great to see Leo DiCaprio playing a bad guy for a change and he's clearly having a ball doing so. Sam Jackson and Chris Waltz are superb and the only downside of such a great cast is that, by comparison, Jamie Foxx seems a bit bland in the lead. But lets face it, the real star of any Tarantino movie is Tarantino himself and 'Django Unchained' sees him at the top of his fun, if morally empty, game. But then this is not cinema as political tract but cinema as entertaining satirical adult fun.

And let's not forget - racists, slave-owners and Southern bigots are gonna hate this movie...

The hero ain't white.

Awesome

PhilMoore Flicks Superstar (?)

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This is another great movie from Tarantino. Dr King Shultz played by Christoph Waltz is looking to free a slave. He ends up freeing Django played by Jamie Foxxx. They then go looking for the Brittle Brothers to kill. Django also wants to find his wife who was bought by Calvin Candie played Leonardo Dicaprio. They end up at Candieland and try to converse with Candie. This film has great dialogue and moments of violence. Leo is brilliant as Candie and Christoph Waltz is just as great. This a fun filled film, with action, violence and a great soundtrack. I highly recommend this film

Django - unchained & unhinged

RealityCheck Flicks Superstar (?)

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Django - Unchained
Did you like the begining of 'Inglorious Bastards'? If you did, then you'll love this. Being a Quentin flick, you can expect certain things; crazy story that sort of makes sense, guns, and great acting. The 2hrs 45min went by excitingly-nailbittingly well as the storyline had several different ways to turn. Western that encourages you to think about the black slave trade, what would you have done? Loved it completely, not for the faint hearted or those whom have trouble with the "N" word (as it's thrashed around more than a cute gay in prison)!
Genre : Western, comedy, action, drama, love story (as always)
5/5 : you will either love it or hate it, remember its a Tarantino flick, sit back, an enjoy it.

All surface and no substance

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Django Unchained's plot is as follows: Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) is a bounty hunter in the search of certain bounty, the Brittle Brothers. He comes across Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, who can help him identify the Brittle Brothers. So Schultz and Django come to an agreement, Django helps Schultz get the Brittle Brothers, and Schutz will help Django to find and rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).

There is something about Tarantino's films that I cannot take seriously. For me, watching a Tarantino movie is like watching Glee or listening to a Britney Spears song. It's all surface and no substance. Visually and viscerally appealing, full of style and glitz, but lacking real nourishment. The film contains snappy dialogue and great visuals as a Tarantino would expect. It is full of kitsch camera work and visual punches backed up with a great soundtrack.

It is brutally violent - I averted my eyes in many scenes. Despite this, the film did not make me think deeply about the social implications of slavery. It made me feel uncomfortable in its depictions of violence, in the way that a good exploitation film does. I'm not sure that this movie is as socially important as Tarantino himself takes credit for.

This film's main problem is that it lags - it takes far too long to resolve itself. It could comfortably lose 30 minutes without damaging the narrative.

I take it for what it is, two and a half hours of entertainment on a Sunday afternoon. Or, as the New Yorker so kindly puts it, a "crap masterpiece".

Hard to watch and utterly brillant at the same time

Sarah29 Flicks Superstar (?)

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Having renewed my faith in Jamie Fox (I am not sure I had much to begin with), Tarantino has delivered a fascinating and highly entertaining film with everything you'd expect and more from the master director. Christoph Waltz was amazing in his performance of the "good guy" and Leo DiCaprio is one of the best and most convincing villains since Waltz's turn in Inglourious Bastards. There are several laugh-out-loud moments which helps to cut the tension of some of the more gruesome scenes, some of which were truly horrific. And although the ending was unnecessarily dragged out to add in an appearance of the director himself, the film was overall brilliant entertainment.

Incredible

Tom-Neunzerling2 Wannabe (?)

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Restored my faith in cinema, and made me want to make it in the film biz even more!

Django Unchained

JackWallace A-Lister (?)

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Django Unchained is Quentin Tarantino's best film since Pulp Fiction. It's just amazing. After Christoph Waltz won best actor for his role as Colonel Hans Landa in Inglourious Basterds, his career went down hill. Now he's rejoined with Tarantino and is just as fantastic as he was in Basterds. Waltz plays Dr. King Schultz, a bounty hunter searching for the Brittle brothers, three criminals wanted dead or alive for a large cash reward. Not knowing what they look like, Schultz purchases Django, played by Jamie Foxx, a black slave who's wife Broomhilda was kidnapped by the Brittle brothers and sold to plantation owner Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio. Jamie Foxx is really good as Django, slave-turned bounty hunter that goes on a journey with King Schultz to kill the Brittle brothers and rescue his wife. But it's Leonardo DiCaprio that steals this movie as the sadistic Calvin Candie, the plantation owner who buys Broomhilda. What I find sad is that DiCaprio is such a great actor, and no matter how hard he tries, he will never get nominated for an Oscar because of how ignorant the Academy is. Samuel L. Jackson is almost unrecognizable as Candie's trusted house slave, Stephen. A truly despicable man. Django Unchained is nearly three hours long, but I was never waiting for it to end. It's what you would expect from Tarantino. Wildly entertaining, darkly funny, and extremely violent. Surprisingly, Django Unchained isn't as dialogue-driven as his previous works. Not that that's a bad thing, I'm just saying. This movie has been heavily criticized for largely using the N word. In the movie's defense, being set in slavery times, It's a word that has to be used. If there's one bad thing I can say about the movie, it would be Quentin Tarantino's awful Australian accent. But he's only in it for five minutes. Django Unchained is a must-see.

Familiar but surprising

Mark-Roulston Flicks Superstar (?)

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I don't know how he keeps doing it, but Quentin Tarantino always surprises me with his restraint.

This might seem like an odd thing to say about the man who gave us the blood-soaked extremes of Kill Bill, Inglourious Basterds and, well, any of his other films, but for whatever reason I always expect his films to completely slip the leash and run wild. Django Unchained maintains the madness of the director's earlier films, but more so than ever before, it feels like he has kept his most extreme instincts relatively in check.

Django Unchained begins with a fairly simple A-to-B narrative. Pre-Civil War era slave Django (Jamie Foxx) is acquired (in a classic Tarantino opening scene, rivaling Inglourious Basterds) by Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a bounty hunter on the search for three wanted brothers. However, it soon becomes apparent that this hunt encompasses only the film's opening third, and a much more sprawling story unfolds over the course of the close to three hour running time. For assisting Schultz, Django earns his freedom and the pair enter into a vengeful partnership in pursuit of Django's wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a slave sold to the sadistic Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Perhaps more than any of Tarantino's previous films, it feels like he is really trying to say something with Django Unchained. As great as a film like Pulp Fiction is, it really works on cool factor alone, and couldn't exactly be praised for its depth. Here however, Tarantino seems to know precisely when to dial back the cool to comment on the nature of human violence. While full of outrageous gunfights packed to the brim with geysers of gore, the film features an alarming amount of up close, almost intimate brutality that is very upsetting.

Which feels to me like precisely the point. The savagery inflicted upon slaves by their white masters is shoved right in the audiences face, and is much more difficult to endure than the exaggerated violence of the guns, which draw more laughs than anything else. Tarantino has never shied away from violence in his work, but the very clear binary nature of the bloodshed in Django Unchained feels very carefully thought out, and really opens the film up for deeper analysis than anything he has done before.

That said, Django Unchained doesn't completely escape Tarantino's self-indulgent streak. The sheer length of the film will certainly cause some viewers to question the necessity of much of the final 30 minutes, particularly the baffling sequence in which the director makes his obligatory cameo appearance. Also, the most egregious use of a certain n-word since Mel Brooks' Blazing Saddles is going to raise eyebrows with conservative audiences, opening the debate of whether Tarantino is simply courting controversy in the hopes of drawing a crowd.

Aside from perhaps the director himself, the acting is top-notch across the board, with Foxx and Waltz sharing great chemistry, and DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson (as house slave Stephen) both hilarious and frightening in equal measure. Django Unchained navigates a razor-thin space between raucously entertaining and unapologetically confronting, yet rarely veers too far either side to become either exploitative or preachy. It's a familiar but somehow surprising effort from Tarantino, and while it may not rank amongst his most well-crafted films, Django Unchained stands out as a bold and completely assured work from a modern auteur doing exactly what he wants to do.

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Tarantino does it again

jennytoso B-Grader (?)

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I SHOULD HATE TARANTINO MOVIES Im a girl, a pacificst and an incurable romantic - but I LOVE them! And here he is doing it again (no horses but unfortunately 750 bottles of tomato sauce were killed in the making of this film). Music brilliant, eye for detail perfect, acting magic, storyline thoroughly satisfying- what more can you ask for in a great movie :)

Tarantino the Indulgent - A heck of a lot of fun.

KeefScorsese A-Lister (?)

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Given Quentin Tarantino's infatuation with the Spaghetti Western genre, its a about goddamn time he's made one. It can be argued however, the director's previous efforts such as the body count Kill Bill Volumes and the glorious Inglourious Basterds feature more in tuned western cinematic touches.

Freed slave Django (Jamie Foxx) treks across the United States with a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) on a mission to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from a cruel and charismatic plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).

As expected the movie is full of all the Tarantino conventions we all enjoy - colourful dialogue, enthusiastic sense of aesthetic design, ridiculous over the top violence and impeccable performances. Special mention to DiCaprio, who as the the charming plantation owner Calvin Candie lets go of his usual top billing but steals the show in undoubtedly one of his best performances. However, it's Candie's most trusted slave Stephen, played so over-zealously by the always reliable Samuel L. Jackson who is the real villain of the movie - a product of the shameful environment of slavery.

Django Unchained is not so polished as Inglorious Basterds but there is a lot to enjoy in this 165 minute almost laugh at minute western. In terms of Tarantino's approach to bloodshed, its perhaps his most tame to the point of almost cartoonish - buckets of blood channelling the great shoot outs in Sam Peckinpah's The Wild Bunch.

Also, Rick Ross, Tupac Shakur and John Legend on the movie's soundtrack - Only Tarantino would have the nerve to put such songs in a western. And it works so brilliantly too.

A great joy ride of a film

JR A-Lister (?)

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This sports some truly great performance's from all of the cast especially Samuel Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio. Jamie Foxx's Django is probably the weakest of all of the character's in the set piece that isn't Kerry Washington. Although that is saying something considering how top notch the performance's of the other cast members are. Leonardo DiCaprio's Calvin Candie is deliciously evil. Which is great to see from an actor of his calibre. Christoph Waltz as the Dr. King Shultz is incredible and is funny and charming and really makes the most of his role. Although the real surprise of the film is Samuel Jackson. As the head house slave Stephen. Who is also delightfully evil. A genius peace of casting from Quentin Tarantino.

The script is what you expect from Quentin Tarantino. Violent, funny and clever. There is some truly funny moments in the film which is great to see. Although some of them are truly un-PC. Which is good to see from Quentin. Also there is two types of violence in this film. The brutally and disgusting violence that he show's us that is used towards the slaves. That completely different to the cartoon violence that we are used to in his usual films and also the rest of the film. The two types that are depicted are quite contradicting and different from what we are used to in this film.

Although it''s not without it's flaws and there is a lot of them. Kerry Washington's character is plain annoying. She is under developed and under played. Which is a disappointment. Although the massive problem with this film is that it has a completely un-neccasry 20 or 30 minutes towards the end of the film that dose not need to be there. It doesn't add anything and becomes kind of boring which is a shame. Also Quentin himself appears towards the latter end of the film for about five minutes of screen time. Of which he is truly awful. He puts on this awful, awful, awful Australian accent that is just awful.

This is a good film that could of been better without the last 20 or so minutes. But still is a great ride of film that is truly enjoyable.

Blood, sweat, gore and LOTS of humour.

queenbee007 A-Lister (?)

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An enjoyable tale and quite funny in parts. I think the use of the word "n****r" made it more amusing because it is such a taboo word today. Good on QT for keeping it real!

WHAT KIND OF DOCTOR? ... Umm.. DENTIST?

RexH Flicks Superstar (?)

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Specialising in lead fillings.
The humour sprinkled throughout Django is perhaps the most surprising aspect of Tarantino's film. From the implied, to the bawdy, to the downright Pythoneseque sequence where the vigilantes argue over the effectiveness of their sackcloth disguises, Django uses humour to both ease the tension and reinforce it. There has always been humour in Tarantino films, of course, but in Django it seems to have reached a new level.
For my money, this is the best Tarantino film since Pulp Fiction. I've read and listened to numerous American critiques of the film and none of them seem to have been able to get past the use of "nigger" in the script. "God damn, look at that - a black person on a horse!" Yeah, that works - not! This was how slavers and whites talked then, and throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Mark Twain's books were removed from American libraries because of his use of the word. Conrad's "Nigger of the Narcissus" was re-titled in the U.S. when first published there. Audiences outside the U.S. don't grasp the polarity and the sensitivity that the word engenders. Black people (African-Americans - even those definitions are a point of contention) live with the knowledge that their great grandparents were slaves or the children of slaves. But even after emancipation, the South held fast to apartheid and lynchings were common (they even made postcards of the hangings). So Tarantino is picking at a still open sore when he attacks slavery head on. And uses humour to do it. What I see as a pointedly satirical piece of humour skewering the nascent stupidity of the pre-Clansmen has been seen as a trivialisation of the vigilantes in the States. It has been pointed out that "Mandingo fights" may well have been a kind of urban myth since there is no objective report of them having occurred. But that's hardly the point in this film - Tarantino uses them to further push the reality of dehumanisation and brutality that were the lot of black people throughout the South (and probably the North and West, as well) at that point in history.
I had no problem with the content of Django, certainly no problem with its filmic aspects. Apart from Tarantino's little bit of self-indulgence towards the end, and that it could easily have been 15 minutes shorter to no ill effect, it easily makes the 4 out of 5 rating for me. Someone - I am unwilling to suggest who - in the great cast deserves some Oscar nods. The movie itself deserves a nomination, if only for having the balls to address head on a subject which too many film-makers have avoided like the plague. Well done, Quentin!

Shoot 'em up!

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Loved it! This is the best movie I've seen in ages. I couldn't tell at times whether they were trying to be serious or funny, but I was entertained the whole way through regardless. Particularly loved the over-the-top blood that was everywhere.

A Tarantino do

Brian1 Flicks Superstar (?)

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Enjoyable and worth attending, but unsurprisingly somewhat over the top, or is it that I just dont get Tarantino?

DJUST AMAZING

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One of Tarantino's best, I would happily see this again and again, which I think always speaks volumes about how entertaining a film really is. Absolute rollercoaster from beginning to end, keeps going when you think it'd be totally fine to end it. Created such an alive world of the film, with beautifully fleshed-out characters, beyond fitting score, mis en scene, and seamlessly shot. If you like Tarantino, for god's sake just see it.