Django Unchained movie review (2013) | Little White Lies

Djan­go Unchained

18 Jan 2013 / Released: 18 Jan 2013

Serious-looking man embracing worried-looking woman, sheltered from rain in a dark setting.
Serious-looking man embracing worried-looking woman, sheltered from rain in a dark setting.
4

Anticipation.

Django all the way! Then again, it’s nearly three hours...

4

Enjoyment.

War of the words. Waltz, DiCaprio and Jackson are indeed off the chain.

4

In Retrospect.

Not a masterpiece, but a funny, violent, very entertaining crowdpleaser.

Hate, mur­der and revenge as Quentin Taran­ti­no goes west. Well, south.

Lay­ing down his vengeance tril­o­gy after killing Bill and Hitler, Quentin Tarantino’s new/​old sto­ry of hate, mur­der and revenge’ takes the title tune from Ser­gio Corbucci’s 1966 pulp-West­ern about a gun­slinger who drags a cof­fin behind him, but leaves Django’s famous gatling gun under the lid. QT’s movie shoots from the lip.

Rewind­ing to the Deep South of the 1850s means that, for the first time since his colour-cod­ed debut Reser­voir Dogs, this is a Taran­ti­no film set in a man’s world. Instead of foot fetishism and aveng­ing angels, we have Jamie Foxx’s scarred slave being freed by a Ger­man den­tist-turned-boun­ty-hunter called Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz).

So mag­nif­i­cent was Waltz in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds that the film fad­ed every time he stepped off-screen. It’s a no-brain­er move, then, that sees Taran­ti­no push the Aus­tri­an actor front-and-cen­tre into a hero role here and, sure enough, Waltz’s Schultz is anoth­er ter­rif­ic cre­ation: fun­ny, debonair, lethal and three moves ahead of every­one else.

Hav­ing become the Vince and Jules of pre-Civ­il War bad­lands, Schultz and Djan­go set out to recov­er Big D’s wife Broomhil­da (Ker­ry Wash­ing­ton) from the plan­ta­tion where they meet their dead­ly dou­bles: sadis­tic own­er Calvin Can­die (Leonar­do DiCaprio) and his fever­ish­ly loy­al man-ser­vant Stephen (Samuel L Jackson).

Under the pre­tence of buy­ing one of Candie’s Mandin­gos’ – slaves who com­pete in UFC-style death match­es on his bil­liard room floor – Waltz engages DiCaprio in a huge­ly enter­tain­ing bat­tle of wits and words in an elab­o­rate con to save the Ger­man-speak­ing Mrs D. In any lan­guage – and he shows off three of them – you could watch Waltz read the phone book and still be cap­ti­vat­ed. But while no one could touch him in Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds, here Waltz has not one but two equal­ly sharp foils.

Oscil­lat­ing between artic­u­late flam­boy­ance and wealthy rage as the phrenol­o­gy-obsessed vil­lain, DiCaprio has sure­ly just installed him­self as Tarantino’s newest reg­u­lar. But it’s one of the director’s old favourites who prac­ti­cal­ly steals it from Waltz. On fire behind a facial pros­thet­ic and an elder­ly stoop, Samuel L Jack­son deliv­ers one of the most mem­o­rable per­for­mances of his career – trem­bling, per­ma­nent­ly dis­mayed, immense­ly fun­ny and dan­ger­ous­ly savvy. Putting the vile into servile, he’s an unusu­al­ly rich and com­pli­cat­ed char­ac­ter. What­ev­er Taran­ti­no gave him on the page, Jack­son has run away with it.

Lux­u­ri­ous­ly stretched and rel­ished by the cast, a cen­tre­piece din­nertable sequence sees all three actors mak­ing every word of Tarantino’s lengthy dia­logue sing like a sharp­ened Bowie knife. Won­der­ful­ly, Taran­ti­no writes his gen­tle­man killers Schultz and Can­die as stick­lers for good eti­quette: pur­chas­es must have a receipt, hats must not be placed on the table and cour­te­ous­ness is vital at all times.

Even after free­ing Djan­go with dead­ly force, Schultz insists on pay­ing for him fair and square. On dis­cov­er­ing there’s been a ruse, Candie’s anger vol­ca­noes not because he’s been deceived, but because his two guests have been wast­ing his time. Sure enough, the film’s most cat­a­stroph­ic shootout is trig­gered by one character’s insis­tence on a hand­shake after busi­ness has been concluded.

This being a Spaghet­ti dish, QT cer­tain­ly doesn’t for­get the red sauce. Blood sprays the walls, bul­lets splat into heads, knees and nether regions, although car­toon kill-shots are paired with a straight-faced bru­tal­i­ty that his cam­era some­times turns away from. Just as he did with Bas­ter­ds, Taran­ti­no has rewrit­ten his­to­ry to put right what once went wrong, but while machine­gun­ning Hitler in a movie the­atre was a blast, there’s some­thing about Django’s vio­lent cathar­sis that seems sur­pris­ing­ly genuine.

Still, the sto­ry los­es a lot when it los­es DiCaprio and Waltz, leav­ing Foxx to dish out the film’s final pay­back in method­i­cal fash­ion. Next to his expert­ly loqua­cious pard­ner, the D is com­par­a­tive­ly silent, although Foxx smoul­ders effec­tive­ly with anguish and rage. And for all it’s spec­tac­u­lar talk, Djan­go Unchained doesn’t have any­thing big to say about slav­ery (bad) or revenge (good) or any­thing else really.

You can’t shake the feel­ing that Taran­ti­no writes great scenes not great movies, but the sheer charis­ma of his cast seals over the lack of sinewy con­nec­tive tis­sue in the script. Can­ter­ing out over near­ly three hours, this is anoth­er pulp novel­la extend­ed to mock-epic length and it’s to QT’s cred­it – along­side Waltz, DiCaprio and Jack­son – that Djan­go Unchained sup­ports its giant run­ning time far more robust­ly than Inglou­ri­ous Bas­ter­ds did.

It’s a film stud­ded with wit­ty touch­es, from Schultz polite­ly intro­duc­ing his hors­es, Fritz and Tony, to the wib­bly­wob­bly tooth that’s spring-mount­ed on the top of his wag­on. N‑bombs eas­i­ly out­gun F‑bombs as Deep South race rela­tions are mined for Blaz­ing Sad­dles humour (“It’s a nig­ga on a horse,” gaw­ps one small­town local), along with QT’s twists on genre touch­stones (Ser­gio Leone crash-zooms, Broomhilda’s yel­low dress, Waltz and Foxx rid­ing through the snow like John Ford’s searchers), his anachro­nised musi­cal cues (Mor­ri­cone to hip-hop), his fan­boy cameos (a nice one for Fran­co Nero; a nut­ty one for him­self ) and Robert Richardson’s bold, beau­ti­ful cinematography.

Then the gun­smoke clears, the vil­lains lie in bloody bits and Django’s song sends our hero off into sun­set. He and Broomhil­da, claims Taran­ti­no in a typ­i­cal­ly irrelevant/​irresistible inter­tex­tu­al flour­ish, are actu­al­ly the great, great, great grand­par­ents of blax­ploita­tion icon John Shaft. For cer­tain, the sto­ry of a slave who became a boun­ty hunter is all just a lit­tle bit of his­to­ry repeating.

You might like