Django Unchained Review

Freed slave Django teams up with a bounty hunter to rescue his wife from a ruthless plantation owner.

There are fewer things in life that bring as much natural joy, as seeing a Quentin Tarantino movie at the cinema. The man who was seemingly born to paint pictures on the silver screen is famed for his bold canvass strokes, his intricate knowledge of genre and ability to balance light and dark with humour and violence in equal measure. Django Unchained is the latest cinematic masterpiece to be revealed and is designed to instil shock and awe.

After the cavalcade of historically questionable destruction that was World War Two zinger Inglorious Basterds, Tarantino reunites with that film’s breakout star, Christophe Waltz, to carry the narrative of a liberated slave seeking to free his wife from a Mississippi cotton plantation known as Candieland. Jamie Foxx is suitably menacing and driven as the titular character, and Leonardo DiCaprio revels in the bad guy role as cotton magnate Calvin Caddie. This makes a refreshing change for DiCaprio and quite how he missed out on an Oscar nomination remains a complete mystery.

QT regular Samuel L. Jackson steals every scene as Candie’s valet Stephen – a black man who has only every known life as a slave – and his quasi father-son relationship with his master highlights the paradoxical nature between the inequality slavery promotes and the dependence their white owners place upon them.

These great performances considered, Waltz is the beating heart of the story. Playing the avuncular and articulate Dr. King Schultz, his ruthless professional efficiency is exacted in his first appearance, and from that moment, you’re hooked. Deserving of his recent Bafta accolade, the movie suffers with a lack of Waltz in the final act, and much of the criticism towards the film is for its ending. Revenge is a rich thread in Tarantino’s work and the closing chapter feels somewhat overdone, but no less satisfying for it.

All the of the goodwill the movie builds across its 2 hour 45 minute running time will be needed to get some audiences through to the closing credits, but watching in a packed theatre prevented any potential boredom from setting in. The script is funny, hilarious in fact, and while you may feel guilty for guffawing at some points, you know Tarantino is drawing on his vast knowledge of international film history and cultural savvy in the non-mincing of his words. However, I don’t think he intended for his Australian accent to be quite to humorous.

Django Unchained proves yet again that their is nobody better in the world at the cinematic shaggy dog story, that will thrill, enlighten and make you laugh. If film is intended as a medium through which the human condition can be analysed, we are privileged to spend these nigh on three hours inside the mind of Quentin Tarantino.