It's late in the year 2012 and Quentin
Tarantino, via the Weinstein Company, has released a new
movie. That's a big deal, and probably always will be
because that's the kind impact Tarantino has on the film
community. Sometimes after watching a Q.T. joint we
think that maybe, possibly, that the Weinstein's might want
exert some kind of control over the man, reign him in a bit,
maybe trim the size of these epics that he makes down to a
size where the average consumer can actually digest them… but
I know that's crazy talk. All that nonsense aside today
we watched 'Django Unchained', which was… wonderful.
And… frustrating. Basically all the things we come to
expect from a Quentin Tarantino film in his post 'Reservoir
Dogs', 'Pulp Fiction' career.
Real quick like, Dr. King Shultz (Christopher Waltz) is a
German bounty hunter in south Texas. Don't ask how this
came to be. He needs to find these three brothers with a
nice little bounty on their heads, tracks down a slave in the
midst of transportation named Django (Jamie Foxx) who he knows
is intimately familiar with what these gentleman looks like,
makes a deal with some slave traders to acquire Django… more
or less… and adventure is now afoot.
Now Dr. Schultz is personally none too fond of slavery, but in
this instance Django being in bondage works in his favor a
bit. Besides, once the job is done he has agreed to
grant Django his freedom. What Django plans to do with
this new found freedom of his, once this job is done, is to
track down his wife Hildie (Kerry Washington) with whom he got
separated from after the two tried to make a run for it.
Easy enough. Thing is that Hildie's
sale transaction happened in Mississippi, not the best place
even for a free Black Man in 2012… uh… I mean 1858… so Dr.
Schultz proposes that Django hang out with him for the winter,
kill up some white folks with bounties on their heads, sock
away some cash and then in the spring the both of them will go
down to Mississippi and find out to whom Hildie was sold to.
Turns out Hildie was sold to the cotton farm of the scurrilous
Calvin Candie as played by Leonardo DiCaprio, and I gotta tell
you, I haven't seen actor seem to have so much fun playing a
slave owner since Chuck Conners as Master Tom way back in
'Roots'. Leo was completely off the chain for the
relatively short amount of time he was in this movie.
Dr. Schultz has a plan to relieve Hildie from the grips of Mr.
Candie, it is convoluted, and has something to do with an
original term created just for this movie called 'Mandingo
Fighting'. Think 'Fight Club', but with slaves, and
tapping out is not an option.
Schultz's convoluted plan should work because the truth of the
matter is that Mr. Candie isn't all that bright, but his ultra
loyal house slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) is that bright,
and he's knows something isn't right and he's about to mess
some stuff up. Just know that boy finds girl, boy will
unfortunately lose the girl, but the boy will try to get the
girl back. It's not going to pretty when he does this.
As long as Quentin Tarantino makes
movies, I believe I will always like his movies because he
copies… I mean 'homages'… the movies I love the most, and he
does it well. When this movie opens, with songs written
by Ennio Freaking Morricone, along with the trademark quick
zooms that were prevalent in Italian Spaghetti Westerns… you
know you're in for a treat. Then there's the closing
sequence which steals the theme from 'My Name is Trinity'
which almost made me cry since that's like my favorite
spaghetti western. But that's the beginning and the end
of 'Django Unchained' which means we still have 160 minutes
worth of movie in-between to deal with.
Now it's not that these 160 minutes are bad, oh good heavens
no, but it is an odd mixture of brilliance and overwrought
Tarantino-esque self-indulgence. I realize that
Tarantino is a brilliant writer, arguably one of the best
ever, but he still might not be quite as good as he thinks he
is. There were parts of 'Django' that felt bloated,
overlong, and unnecessary. Of course this was nothing
that an editor couldn't have fixed, maybe shaved a good twenty
minutes off of this movie, but I gotta assume that the
director was in the room while this edit was going down so
this is what we got.
But enough of that because the good still heavily outweighs
what little might've been no-so-good in this movie.
Foxx, Waltz and DiCaprio were fantastic in this movie, the
supporting cast was just as good and nobody squeezes more out
of Samuel L. than Quentin Tarantino can. Then there are
the numerous cameos because I guess the opportunity to work in
an ultra-cool Quentin Tarantino movie is just too much to pass
up. In particular I thought that was Amber Tamblyn
playing the whore in the window of that dusty town, but then
that three second shot was all we got of her, so maybe it
wasn't. Ah… but it was. Maybe she had lines that
will be in the Blu-Ray extras, but here she was just a whore
in a window.
We also enjoyed the fact that everything was so over the top,
and it did work wonders here, at least for me it
did. I mean people who got shot exploded like
vampires getting staked in 'True Blood', and to that end
the violence was insane. James Remar does show up in two
roles, which did have me confused since Remar-1 got his head
blown off, but can you ever have enough Remar? I don't
think you can. Plus the movie was consistently
funny. A lot of the stuff we probably shouldn't have
been laughing at, but whaddayagonnado?
The bottom for me personally is that I enjoyed 'Django
Unchained' quite a bit. I wouldn't call it a great
movie, but it was a ridiculously entertaining one.
