Movie Review: Django Unchained

Django Unchained: a Quentin Tarantino film.   Despite the violence, a film you should see.   Lincoln told the story of how the 13^th amendment was enacted.   Django tells you why it was necessary.   The brutality of slavery is visually portrayed in a modern retelling of Birth of a Nation except this time it is a Black man saving his enslaved wife.  The movie stars Jamie Foxx as Django (the d is silent, as we are told in a scene with Franco Nero) and Christoph Waltz as a former dentist named Dr. King Schultz.   Waltz was the evil Nazi in Inglorious Bastards.  This time he is a bounty hunter.  There are other actors from prior Tarantino films present including Samuel Jackson as head Uncle Tom of the southern mansion owned by Calvin Candie.   Candie is played by Leonardo DiCaprio and his performance as the plantation owner is so good that you will truly hate this man by the time the closing sequence commences.   The movie opens with scenes that are pure Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood except you have black men, including Django, being walked in chains across the western landscape.  Time period is 1858, two years before Civil War commences.  Waltz arrives and frees Django only because he knows what certain white men who have a  bounty on their lives look like.   Waltz and Django relationship evolves after Waltz learns about Django’s wife, played by Kerry Washington, and together they travel to Mississipi with a plan to buy Washington’s freedom.    During the journey and while at the planation, Tarantino visually shows both the brutality of slavery and the mind set of those involved with maintaining the system.   Do we have stereotypes?  Yes, but there is usually a reason for the emergence of a stereotype.  Visually, the movie is stunning.  Robert Richardson is the photography director.  The music score and selection is part of the reason this film works.    The film runs 2 hours, 45 minutes but you won’t be bored as the storyline keeps your attention and the acting is superb.  Examples include Jackson’s facial expression when he first sees Foxx ride in to the mansion house on a horse and DiCarpio explaining why the Negro (the N word is used a lot), although outnumbering the Southern white slave owners, do not rebel.   While many of the scenes will  remind you of other films, this movie is truly an original.  This is much more than a Blaxploitation film.   With Waltz and the historical alternative endings, some have compared this movie to Inglorious Bastards.    While I gave a thumbs up on Bastards, this film is so much more.  Is it better than Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction?  I can say it is at least its equal.   Note that slavery was violent and in telling a story about slavery, there needs to be violence.