4.5 out of 5
There are few filmmakers whose work makes me feel as giddy and excited as Quentin Tarantino, and Django Unchained is no exception. A blaxploitation Western revenge flick in which a slave gets to exact bloody vengeance on slavers, Django Unchained is pulpy, bloody fun for every second of its running time. As you'd expect from a Tarantino film, the visuals and soundtrack work together in exhilarating ways, and the entire cast gives outstanding performances that will rank among career highlights for them all. As a German bounty hunter whose best weapon is his gift of gab, Christoph Waltz proves that he and QT should work together for the rest of their lives; as the titular freed slave Django, Jamie Foxx exudes danger and charisma in equal amounts constantly; and as the villains of the film, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson bring some astonishing work, making their characters horrifying and yet incredibly watchable and compelling. If there's a bad side to Django, it's that it lacks some of the complexity that Tarantino is capable of in his best work; look, for example, at Inglourious Basterds, which told a similar historical revenge tale while also becoming a commentary on the power of cinema and propaganda. Django has some elements of commentary to it, to be sure - there's a subtext to the film about white men using minorities for their entertainment that speaks directly to the blaxploitation genre, and QT's choice of role for his much-maligned cameo plays directly into this idea as well - but it never comes off as strongly or as interestingly as the cinema scenes in Basterds. Add to that a couple of scenes that, while hilariously funny, kind of disrupt the film's flow (there's a long gag involving white hoods that had me crying with laughter, but I'll concede that it almost ends up feeling like a Family Guy cutaway gag), and I'll admit that Django has a couple of demerits working against it. But those are exceedingly small issues, and once you set them aside, Django is still a great filmmaker working at the top of his game, and there's so much here that's exhilarating, funny, entertaining, and spectacular that Django still earns a place among the best movies of the year, and a nicely explosive entry into the annals of films dealing with race. In short, it's another essential film from one of the best directors working today.
- Josh Mauthe
- Josh Mauthe