Movie Review: Django Unchained (2012)

Release Year: 2012
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Writer: Quentin Tarantino
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Rating: R
Runtime: 2 hours 25 minutes
Setting: Texas, Georgia





What It's About

For his foray into the Western film genre, the director-who-needs-no-introduction Quentin Tarantino chose to resurrect the spaghetti Western character of Django. Made famous by Franco Nero in the 1966 eponymous film, the character of Django would go on to appear in more than 30 other features - though none were "officially" linked to the Sergio Corbucci original. Thus it comes as no surprise, then, that the Django of Tarantino's creation bears practically no resemblance to any previous incarnation.

In Django Unchained, Jamie Foxx plays the titular character who - with the aid of German-born bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) - escapes slavery in Texas and embarks on a quest to find and free his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). Along the way, Django learns to shed the mental bonds of his life as a slave and refine the gunslinging and  subterfuge skills he'll need to survive in the antebellum South. Django's former overseers and a white supremacist vigilante group led by Big Daddy (Don Johnson) are just two obstacles that the duo must overcome to reach Calvin Candie's (Leonardo DiCaprio) Georgia plantation and Broomhilda.

Knowing Tarantino's predilection for over-the-top violence, I expected Django Unchained to not be able to hold my full attention for its nearly two-and-a-half hour runtime. Instead, although the violence is at a level on par with his previous films, Tarantino managed to pen a film that is not only honest to the origins of the title character but also sheds an unflinching light on that "peculiar institution" from which Django emerges.

Tarantino's - dare I say it - genius is on full display throughout Django Unchained. The encounter with Big Daddy and his band of vigilantes, which includes Jonah Hill, is absolutely hilarious. The comedy continues as Samuel L. Jackson makes his sixth appearance in a Tarantino film as Steven, Calvin Candie's head house slave. In fact, it's quite a spectacular juxtaposition that Tarantino creates as he handles the horrors of slavery with brutal honesty and still manages to inject enough laugh-out-loud comedy to keep the film from becoming oppressively bleak.

All of the lead actors deliver brilliant performances, which is remarkable given that the characters portrayed by Johnson and DiCaprio are so morally repugnant. The two should definitely be commended. Jamie Foxx, not one of my favorite actors, nevertheless impressed me with his command of the Django character. While he didn't have a ton of emotional range, his very Eastwood-esque demeanor fit well within the atmosphere of the film.

An added bonus is the brief cameo by Franco Nero in a bit of a tongue-in-cheek exchange with Foxx. Tarantino has made it no secret that he's a fan of classic and spaghetti Westerns, and his homage to the originator of the mystique surrounding the Django character was a classy move.

There really wasn't much about Django Unchained that I could - or want to - find fault with. Some of the CGI effects were a touch on the amateurish side and a few of the foul utterances from Samuel L. Jackson's character may be a bit of an anachronism, but by and large Tarantino has delivered a faultless film.

Tarantino's head-on tackling of the ugliness of slavery, while a necessary and an important aspect of Django Unchained, will nevertheless shock those viewers who have only a shallow understanding of human bondage. Slavery was an abomination, and Tarantino gives us just a glimpse as to why.

The violence and gore is, initially, held in check but as the film progresses Tarantino's flair for embellishment breaks free. Nothing is very graphic, per se, but to label the film as being bloody would be an understatement.

Just as the issue of slavery is dealt with in a blatant manner, so to is the language of the day. As you would with any Tarantino film, expect Django Unchained to be rife with foul language. In this case, however, the proliferative use of the "n" word by all members of the cast may be unsettling. Understand, though, that this part of the script is just another way that Tarantino exposes the cruelty and crudity of the time period that the film is set in.

There is only one scene of nudity in Django Unchained. Involving Kerry Washington's character Broomhilda, the glimpses of nakedness are extremely brief but the context in which she's shown is a rather cruel and dehumanizing on. There's no titillation here.

Although the majority of Django Unchained is set in the southern United States and not in the West - Tarantino himself considers this a "southern" film and not a Western - all of the elements of a traditional Western are present and accounted for. Like most of Tarantino's films, brutality isn't sacrificed for accessibility, but there is a significant amount of humor present to ease the impact of some of the more graphic scenes. Django Unchained won't be considered a classic, but it is one of the top Westerns released this decade.