Django Unchained
I'm a film nerd. It is therefore pretty much by law that I have to herald Quentin Tarantino as essentially the messiah of cinema. He may be a bit of a weirdo (watch any interview with him and you'll be slightly unsettled, he's kind of like an over-enthusiatic creepy uncle) but his movies speak for themselves. From the fantastic crime capers of Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs & Jackie Brown to the Western war film Inglorious Basterds, he's been obsessed with pop culture and film's cultural heritage. Having already tackled his love of Japanese samurai films he has now gone head to head with the genre that has been his most obvious influence throughout his career, the Western.
Well therein lies the problem, this isn't your traditional western. Sure there are cowboy hats, pistol gun slinging, horse riding and bandits but this is a film that isn't interested in the genre's cliches as much as it is in creating a new genre, the Southern. This film takes place far from what we usually see in these kinds of films with the root of its existence in exposing the slavery inherent at the time. I mean not exposing it, you'd have to be pretty backward not to know about slavery, but very rarely has a film dealt with it in such a brutal fashion and decidedly honest fashion. This is not a film where slavery is glossed over where the main hardship that
That's one criticism with this film I don't really get. Spike Lee, the self-righteous bell-e** of the African American community has spoken out against Tarantino a number of times for his use of the racial slur and has said that this film has reduced a horrible time in his heritage to pulp cinema. Obviously this dude hasn't seen the film because although maybe not the most realistic portrayal, it is probably the least fabricated of all Tarantino films.
The film follows a really straight forward structure for Tarantino and differs from a lot of his work. There is no jumping in time structures, it starts at the start middles int he middle and ends at the end, there's no chapters or chapter titles and there's not a lot of the directorial trademarks. What there is is a whole lot of blood, brilliant music, brilliant dialogue and Samuel L Jackson playing the least cool character he's ever played (and probably the most challenging/interesting).
That may be one of the few problems with the movie (if you haven't guessed yet I really enjoyed it, just realised I hadn't said that) that the plot is almost too simplistic. The whole 'real life fairytale with loads of violence' shtick that was done in Drive seems to be have recreated here. Whilst it really worked in Drive because there was moments of such calm with the violence, in Django it seems to drag a bit. This may be because of the films running time clocking in at over 2 and a half hours or because its Tarantino and with Tarantino we want twisty plots.
Not to say that the film is boring by any stretch, sure there are scenes where you are on edge wanting some face shooting but the actors here are all on top form meaning the long stretches of dialogue never seem to alter the flow of the narrative. If anything in most of Tarantino's previous films it has been the dialogue that has surpassed the action sequences (not the Kill Bills obviously).
Special commendation has to be made for the brilliant Waltz who lives for these kind of exuberant roles and definitely sells it on the wise mentor (even if his character seems to twist somewhat with his exposure to slavery). Foxx is the man who character progression belongs to, we see a slave who has little to no dialogue (because working slaves were rarely allowed to speak) progress into a free man and a hero. Di Caprio is an interesting character simply as he isn't fully a bad guy. He isn't particularly evil in terms of having a big plot to foil the heroes. He is simply a c*** when pretty much every white American around that time was a c***, but he is a superbly acted c*** with a disgusting, leering presence.
Speaking of disgusting and leering, the specialests of special commendations goes out to good ol' Sam Jackson (surprisingly 'Mother F***er' free) as the house slave who seems to have palled up with Di Caprio's Calvin Candie. He has a horrible presence throughout the film complete with hunchbacked, unbridled racism and a power complex that makes him probably the deepest character throughout the plot. For such a long film I think each character could have been explored better so I'll just have to wait for the rumoured 5 hour director's cut when it comes out on DVD.
Ridiculously gory, ridiculously cool and a completely fresh take on one of the worst aspects of human history, this is Tarantino but not as we've experienced before. I give it a gun-slinging 9.5 out of 10
Well therein lies the problem, this isn't your traditional western. Sure there are cowboy hats, pistol gun slinging, horse riding and bandits but this is a film that isn't interested in the genre's cliches as much as it is in creating a new genre, the Southern. This film takes place far from what we usually see in these kinds of films with the root of its existence in exposing the slavery inherent at the time. I mean not exposing it, you'd have to be pretty backward not to know about slavery, but very rarely has a film dealt with it in such a brutal fashion and decidedly honest fashion. This is not a film where slavery is glossed over where the main hardship that
That's one criticism with this film I don't really get. Spike Lee, the self-righteous bell-e** of the African American community has spoken out against Tarantino a number of times for his use of the racial slur and has said that this film has reduced a horrible time in his heritage to pulp cinema. Obviously this dude hasn't seen the film because although maybe not the most realistic portrayal, it is probably the least fabricated of all Tarantino films.
The film follows a really straight forward structure for Tarantino and differs from a lot of his work. There is no jumping in time structures, it starts at the start middles int he middle and ends at the end, there's no chapters or chapter titles and there's not a lot of the directorial trademarks. What there is is a whole lot of blood, brilliant music, brilliant dialogue and Samuel L Jackson playing the least cool character he's ever played (and probably the most challenging/interesting).
That may be one of the few problems with the movie (if you haven't guessed yet I really enjoyed it, just realised I hadn't said that) that the plot is almost too simplistic. The whole 'real life fairytale with loads of violence' shtick that was done in Drive seems to be have recreated here. Whilst it really worked in Drive because there was moments of such calm with the violence, in Django it seems to drag a bit. This may be because of the films running time clocking in at over 2 and a half hours or because its Tarantino and with Tarantino we want twisty plots.
Not to say that the film is boring by any stretch, sure there are scenes where you are on edge wanting some face shooting but the actors here are all on top form meaning the long stretches of dialogue never seem to alter the flow of the narrative. If anything in most of Tarantino's previous films it has been the dialogue that has surpassed the action sequences (not the Kill Bills obviously).
Special commendation has to be made for the brilliant Waltz who lives for these kind of exuberant roles and definitely sells it on the wise mentor (even if his character seems to twist somewhat with his exposure to slavery). Foxx is the man who character progression belongs to, we see a slave who has little to no dialogue (because working slaves were rarely allowed to speak) progress into a free man and a hero. Di Caprio is an interesting character simply as he isn't fully a bad guy. He isn't particularly evil in terms of having a big plot to foil the heroes. He is simply a c*** when pretty much every white American around that time was a c***, but he is a superbly acted c*** with a disgusting, leering presence.
Speaking of disgusting and leering, the specialests of special commendations goes out to good ol' Sam Jackson (surprisingly 'Mother F***er' free) as the house slave who seems to have palled up with Di Caprio's Calvin Candie. He has a horrible presence throughout the film complete with hunchbacked, unbridled racism and a power complex that makes him probably the deepest character throughout the plot. For such a long film I think each character could have been explored better so I'll just have to wait for the rumoured 5 hour director's cut when it comes out on DVD.
Ridiculously gory, ridiculously cool and a completely fresh take on one of the worst aspects of human history, this is Tarantino but not as we've experienced before. I give it a gun-slinging 9.5 out of 10