Django Unchained 2012
I barely missed this movie when it came out. It was sold out and I ended up seeing Les Miserables instead. I finally got around to see it on Pay Per View when I got a free ticket. Generally I like Quentin Tarantino, and I thought Inglorious Basterds put him back on a good path, but Django Unchained is not his best effort. It still has some great Tarantino flourishes, but the movie rambles quite a bit. There are a number of scenes that set up the two main characters, but it is really too much. Then there is a side story that is part of the main caper that is pretty weak. Christoph Waltz, who was so amazing in Basterds has a bigger role here as kind of a mentor to Jamie Foxx’s Django. And those two characters are pretty good, though Django is fleshed out less than Waltz. We don’t get to know that much about him, really, and he doesn’t have that many lines since Waltz does most of the talking.
The movie weighs in at 3 hours, which is entirely too much, but it does stay interesting, and it usually doesn’t take long before the next shootout. The body count and sloshing blood is over the top. Tarantino usually uses a few violent scenes and a lot of suspense, but here it is mostly just violent scenes and not that much suspense. He is indicting slavery, which is fine. But he also seems to be advocating a race war. Django ends up killing white people pretty indiscriminately. Certainly we’re beyond having a race war over slavery, but racial violence is still out there.
Anyway . . . I like aspects of this movie, but overall felt disappointed. I’ll give it a B, which is the same score I gave the two Kill Bill movies.
Written: 21 Apr 2013
Owned on: Blu-ray, DVD, Digital