Django Unchained

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson, Walton Goggins, James Remar, Jonah Hill
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Rating: R
Genre: Adventure, Drama
2012

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A freed slave (Jamie Foxx) and a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) team up to rescue the slave's wife (Kerry Washington) from a ruthless slave owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).

Review:

Tim: Another Quentin Tarantino film, another movie that has some serious strengths, but is likely overrated as well. I like Tarantino's films, but I feel like too many critics fawn over his every move, rather than grade each film based on its own merits. Let's take a look at Django Unchained. This is a film that firmly aligns with Tarantino's wheelhouse. It's a violent, funny, controversial revenge movie. It is a really good movie, but it's not a great film. It's too flawed to achieve its full potential. While it's good, it is not as good as many critics claim it is.

I actually loved the first 45 minutes or so of the film- the beginning of this film featured all of Tarantino's strengths. We have razor-sharp dialogue, exciting action, violence, racial commentary, and a thoroughly engaging story. The film was incredible for a while, and I loved it. It was so fun to see this brilliant, confident German bounty hunter team with a slave, and train him to be a pretty bad ass bounty hunter as well. Those sequences were terrific.

What often happens in Tarantino movies, though, is that the film comes to a grinding halt. Once Django and Schultz decide to go after Broomhilda (I hate that name), the film crawls along at a glacial pace. There's absolutely no reason for this movie to clock in at 165 minutes. That's stupidly long. This movie needed to be significantly shorter, and the cuts needed to happen in the middle. The middle of this film is soggy and suffers needless delays in action. Tarantino just extends scenes past any normal boundary, to the point where they can be excruciating to watch. While this film didn't feature anything as annoying as certain scenes in Inglourious Basterds, the middle of the film just did not work.

I might as well mention the end of the film, too. What I expected after the slow middle was a really amazing, explosive finale. I felt like the film's conclusion did not meet those expectations. It was average. I wanted the movie to end on a high note, but the conclusion did not deliver the goods. It was just more of the same, and not especially memorable.

One of Tarantino's greatest strengths is assembling terrific casts and giving them dialogue that shows off how talented they can be. The movie starts with Jamie Foxx in the titular role of Django. While I still wish Will Smith had been cast, I have to admit Foxx did a very good job. He was fun as Django, and while I'm glad he did not receive an Academy Award nomination. He was good, but not incredible. Christoph Waltz, on the other hand, was truly remarkable. It is hard for me to describe how much I loved his performance. It was one of the best of 2012- he was intelligent, witty, funny, and had perfect timing on his delivery. I liked Waltz before this film, but he truly amazed me here. His performance was the single greatest aspect of this entire film. I'm very glad he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He deserved it. One of my complaints of this film is that Waltz didn't have more scenes- every moment of his screen time made the whole movie better.

I also have to comment on the surprising Leonardo DiCaprio. DiCaprio is truly an impressive actor, but I never imagined seeing him like this. It was a very brave role to take, because he's this slimy, incredibly racist slave owner that you just have to hate. It's a challenging role, and I cannot imagine anyone besides DiCaprio in it. He embraced the role, and delivered a very strong performance. I really like Kerry Washington, and I was looking forward to seeing her in this film. Unfortunately, she has nothing to do. I barely felt like she was in the movie at all. That was a disappointment. I was also looking forward to seeing Samuel L. Jackson in this film. I loved his appearance- the makeup was quite good. I thought his performance was slightly above average, nothing more.

I do need to comment some on the racism aspect of this film. Slavery and racism are an ugly, ugly part of American history. Part of me wants to forget those things ever happened. However, we need to make sure that history doesn't repeat itself. There is value in watching movies about difficult subjects- it reminds us of the disgusting qualities of racism and what an awful, evil thing slavery was. I appreciate that Tarantino put the ugliness of slavery on full display. That being said, I didn't like the extent to which Tarantino put the violence in-your-face. The dog scene was hard to watch, and the scene with the two slaves fighting to the death was just sickening. I wish Tarantino would have pulled back some. What really made me sick was to read that he filmed much more violent, gruesome scenes, but cut them back. That was a good move. Tarantino has always skirted the line between brave and bad taste. I felt like this film missed the mark a few times.

In the end, Django Unchained was a very good movie. Tarantino put together some truly terrific moments (the scene with Jonah Hill was pointless, but hilarious) and got some brilliant performances out of his cast. There's so many things to love about this movie. Unfortunately, the middle of the film is significantly less effective, and the movie's conclusion did not do enough to redeem it. I really liked this movie, but it was not the great movie many people have claimed it was.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 7.5



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: Inglourious Basterds