2012: The Year in Film: "Django Unchained" Review

As I saw this one on New Years' Eve, this will be the last entrant in the "2012: The Year in Film" series, and we'll move on to 2013. Another year older, hopefully wiser, etc., etc., something like that. Some of you may not know me that well. If you don't, I'm sorry, but if you do, you probably know that I'm an unabashed Quentin Tarantino fanboy. I had a giant Pulp Fiction poster in my room for years, continue to have a Reservoir Dogs poster, and credit Pulp Fiction with being the movie that made me start loving movies. I think that's a common choice among movie buffs ages 25-35. With that being said, it's been extremely interesting over the last decade to see Tarantino transition from being a rebellious young upstart to being a respected elder statesman of sorts. His reputation and prestige have allowed him to do basically anything he wants over the last decade, and the results have been diverse, controversial and always interesting. He's delivered a nearly 5 hour two-part revenge opus in which the main character's name isn't even revealed until the 2nd film and an alternate history in which Jews kill the Nazi leadership in France, both of which few, if any, filmmakers could get made, let alone doit well, and he follows that up with a similar alternate history flick featuring slavery in the American south.

Much in the same way that "Inglourious Basterds" is at once an homage and an update to the classic World War 2 films of the 50's and 60's, "Django Unchained" is a spaghetti Western with a Tarantino twist. The film focuses on Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who has recently been sold after an escape attempt, and a German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who needs Django because he's able to identify the Brittle Brothers, slave overseers with a hefty price on their heads.  Schultz and Django hit it off and Django shows surprising aptitude at bounty hunting, so they decide to partner up and in exchange Schultz will help Django rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington).  The duo finally track down Hilde at a notorious plantation called Candyland, run by one Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) and try to put together a plan to secure her freedom.

Tarantino's films have a tendency to feel fragmented, split into separate scenes or chapters that can be uneven and give his films a disjointed feel.  Unlike Inglourious Basterds and several of his other films, Django has a cohesive narrative and feels like something that another director could have made narrative-wise.

The Good: This is an impressive film.  It's nearly 3 hours long but manages to never feel unnecessarily long, which is a feat in and of itself nowadays.  It features Tarantino's trademark dialogue in spades, and there simply isn't another filmmaker alive who takes as much joy in the interaction of his characters that he does. It's brutal, it's often funny, it's simply a joy to watch.   Tarantino doesn't shy away at all from the possibly sensitive nature of his subject, and honestly, that's a good thing.  A revenge fantasy doesn't deserve kid gloves.  Visually it's great and manages at once to feel like the classic westerns of the 60's and 70's while being something distinct and wholly new.  The cast is great.  Waltz (we should all thank Tarantino for bringing him to America) simply owns every scene that he's in, bringing different, European sensibilities to the antebellum south and really owning the juicy dialogue he's given.  DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson really revel in their roles as villains, really bringing the charm and managing to be both charismatic and evil in the way that all great movie villains are. Foxx is strong as well, while his character isn't given the same wealth of material as Waltz and DiCaprio are, his character has a great heroes' arc, and really develops over the film's 2.75 hours. 

The Bad: There isn't too much bad, or even negative, at all. There are some scenes that are hard to watch, but let's be honest, chattel slavery in general wasn't hard to watch. It's become common on the internet to criticize Tarantino's gratuitous use of time appropriate racial epithets and shocking brutality, but to me it really isn't all that different, thematically and tone-wise than Inglourious Basterds. The way that was a Holocaust/WW2 revenge fantasy, this is a slave revenge fantasy. Plain and simple. People are cruel and say awful things, because let's be honest, when you own a human being like they are a piece of livestock, you probably aren't very nice to that livestock. My $.02.

In all, there are some hilarious scenes (a scene with hooded southerners seeking revenge is particularly funny), and Django and Dr. Schultz carve a trail of bodies across the south and west that's simply a lot of fun. The dialogue is outstanding, and Tarantino has really added one of his best films to his filmography. If you're a Tarantino fan, a fan of Westerns, or even a fan of movies, go see this one. It's one of the top 3 or 4 flicks of the year and just might be Tarantino's best since Pulp Fiction. 9/10