What: Django Unchained
Where: Cineplex Odeon Victoria, Cineplex Odeon Victoria, Silver City
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson and Don Johnson.
Parental advisory: R (violence, profanity, adult themes)
Rating: HH 1/2 (our of five)
Steven Rea
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Neck-deep into Quentin Tarantino鈥檚 antebellum western Django Unchained, I had this mental image of the uber-geek genre filmmaker tapping furiously on his laptop, beaming at the brilliance of every new piece of dialogue he鈥檚 writ.
For all I know, Tarantino works on a typewriter, or longhand on a legal pad (or dictates his copy to a Gal Friday in spike heels), but in any event, as the banter ping-ponged across the dining table in the plantation mansion of slave-master Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio, twirling his mustache), with Jamie Foxx (in the title role), Christoph Waltz (as a winking bounty hunter), Kerry Washington (the slave girl Django has come to rescue), and Samuel L. Jackson (Candie鈥檚 slave majordomo) all taking their turns, the endless, over-the-top badinage really started to bug me.
Tarantino has done this before (Sydney Tamiia Poitier and her gal pals gabbing away in Death Proof, the lengthy bar scene in Inglourious Basterds), and it really doesn鈥檛 make for great cinema, despite what Tarantino may think. Less is more, dude.
But then again, if you鈥檙e going to pay homage to Mandingo and pre-Eastwood spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation pics and Sam Peckinpah, and maybe a little John Ford, too, economy is not going to be the driving concern.
Django Unchained tells the tale of a stoic slave, his back crosshatched with whip scars, who is offered his freedom if he helps a German-born bounty hunter track down an infamous band of brothers with whom Django has had firsthand experience.
鈥淚 kill white people and get paid for it?鈥� Django says, listening to this proposition. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 not to like?鈥�
Foxx is the straight man in all this, bringing dignity and dash to the proceedings, while Waltz, who nabbed a supporting-actor Oscar for his portrayal of a zealous SS officer in Inglourious Basterds, gets to steal another show with his gentlemanly elocution and dangerous panache. Like Inglourious Basterds, too, Django Unchained is big on the N-word. Not 鈥淣azi,鈥� but the other one, which, befitting a narrative set in the pre-Civil War South, is uttered often, with contempt.
Tonally, like Inglourious Basterds again, Django Unchained is all over the place. It鈥檚 a fight to convey genuine emotion, or genuine anything, when every scene smacks of archness, tipping its Stetson to other movies, other eras. Tarantino lines up a parade of his B-movie icons to show their faces: Don Johnson, Bruce Dern, Michael Parks, Franco Nero, Russ Tamblyn, Lee Horsley, Robert Carradine, and it鈥檚 impossible not to get into some of the cameos, some of the stunts.
And when Foxx鈥檚 Django shows up dressed like Gainsborough鈥檚 Blue Boy, in the guise of a 鈥渂lack slaver鈥� advising Waltz鈥檚 Dr. Schultz on his purchases, it鈥檚 fine and dandy stuff. Ditto some of the jokes (DiCaprio鈥檚 Candie is an avowed Francophile, but he doesn鈥檛 speak French; Waltz鈥檚 bounty hunter is also a dentist, and his wagon is topped with a giant molar).
Is Django Unchained about race and power and the ugly side of history? Only as much as Inglourious Basterds was about race and power and the ugly side of history. It鈥檚 a live-action, heads-exploding, shoot-鈥檈m-up cartoon. Sometimes it crackles, and sometimes it merely cracks.
