Django Unchained

The N Word, Poorly Knitted Hoods and One Awful Accent

Unfortunately, as I currently write this review, Django Unchained has been released for a few months, so this review is hardly timely. However, I feel that the ability to look retrospectively on how the film was gauged by audiences gives me a better understanding of my own opinions on Quentin Tarantino's latest film as it has taken some time for me to fully verbalise my thoughts.

Tarantino has built his entire filmmaking career on shocking the audience whilst simultaneously referencing films and genres that he grew up watching.  His first film, Reservoir Dogs, captivated and intrigued audiences, providing inspiration to aspirational film-makers.

He followed this with Pulp Fiction, which cemented his place in the public's common knowledge. Critics loved him and his fresh, innovative approach to gritty American films. However, in recent years, Tarantino has been acquiring his share of negative criticism, with viewers becoming tired of his constant pop culture references and infatuation with sleazy exploitation. With 2007, came Death Proof. Critics and audiences were labelling it Tarantino's least beloved film, a sentiment that the director shares to this day.

However, Inglorious Basterds was a return to form, certainly in this critic's opinion and with QT branching out to work within genres, such as Basterds' war-time era, hopes were high when he announced his next feature Django Unchained was going to be Tarantino's first foray into the genre of westerns.

The story of Unchained centres around the relationship between the bounty hunter/dentist Dr Schultz, played effortlessly by Tarantino's latest muse Christoph Waltz, and the titular slave Django, played by Jamie Foxx. Django is the only alive person to have seen Schultz's latest bounties so acquires his help in locating these ruffians.   In return, Schultz will split the bounty money with Django and promises to try and free his wife, Broomhilda, from the clutches of slave-owner and plantation baron Calvin Candie, ruthlessly portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio.

The promise of a Tarantino film starring three fantastic actors in Foxx, Waltz and Leo had me salivating like a goth at a Tim Burton meet-and-greet when I saw the teaser trailer for the first time.  Tarantino usually can be counted on to give worthy actors an amazing script with which to work; Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz in Inglorious Basterds; Tim Roth, Harvey Keitel and Steve Buscemi in Reservoir Dogs; Bob de Niro, Robert Forster and Samuel L. Jackson in Jackie Brown. He continues the trend here with the script being pithy and tongue-in-cheek but also quite vicious and scandalous, particularly in the continued use of 'the N word'.

Tarantino seems to have quite an affinity for this word, as Samuel L. Jackson uses it in nearly every film in which QT casts him. In this instance, Tarantino has said it is to bring the audience into the era in which the film is set, and to give us an example of how black people were treated. While this does produce the desired reaction at first, the effect becomes tedious the hundredth time you hear it and starts distracting from noticing what else is being said in the dialogue.

The script is also thirty minutes too long, as an appropriate ending to the storyline presents itself and I was left thinking, “Ah, here is a perfect place to finish it and it will seem like a rip-roaring revenge epic, the like that only QT can produce!”, but no, it continued for a full half an hour more! Here comes Quentin himself, with a god-awful Australian accent! It goes from bad to worse!

As well as the screenplay beginning to falter in the final act, so does the calibre of it's leading man. I have nothing against Jamie Foxx as an actor whatsoever, but unfortunately late on into the film, both Leo and Waltz's characters do not feature and the action is laid solely at the feet of Mr Foxx, and he doesn't really grab the audience's attention. This isn't due to Foxx not portraying Django properly, as I felt he acted perfectly fine in the role. However, the first hundred minutes of Unchained make the dynamic and animosity between Leo and Waltz's characters, Candie and Schultz, feel as if this is the main backbone of the film, rather than the titular hero's. So when they leave the film, the audience is left with the silent slave-turned-gunslinger, and we don't have that much passion for his journey to be fulfilled as much as Schultz's growing vendetta against Candie.

However, those criticisms aside, it still was an outstanding experience, filled with laughs, grimaces and overall entertainment from start to finish. Tarantino manages to produce a very decent entry into the western film genre, and now can move onto whatever project he now wants to focus on, word is it is a sequel to Kill Bill.

But regarding Django Unchained, it is not one of Tarantino's best, but even that is better than most of the production-line fare that is coming out of Hollywood these days.

Rating - 6/10