Quentin Tarantino has never been one to
play it safe. His movies are loud, big, violent, dirty, and smart
(pay attention to that last part, Michael Bay). In his latest film,
Django Unchained he's at it again. It's the rare film where
you can actually hear and see studio notes being ignored. It's the
first film in a long time that actually made me say “Holy Shit!”
out loud. It's a love story to the old spaghetti westerns starring
Clint Eastwood, with a modern, ultraviolent twist. The film is
overlong, but only because it is so stuffed full of ideas. There is a
point when the film could've ended quite nicely, but then it
continues for another forty minutes. But the way this movie is too
long fits it just right, every moment that goes by is just as
entertaining as the last. Tarantino has done it again.
Christoph Waltz (who teamed up with
Tarantino in his last film, Inglourious Basterds)
is King Schultz a German dentist turned bounty hunter in the old
west. He's hunting for a group of criminals known as the Brittle
Brothers, but unfortunately he doesn't know what they look like, he
locates a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who saw the Brittle
Brothers at the plantation he used to work at. Schultz buys Django
and the two of them make a pact: if Django helps Schultz find and
kill the Brittle brothers Django will receive $25 for each Brittle
Brother and his freedom. After riding all the way from Texas to
Tennessee to find the Brittle Brothers, the two bounty hunters form a
bond, and it is decided that the two of them will stay together
through the winter, and Django will keep a third of the bounties they
earn. Django's ultimate goal is to locate his wife, Brunhilde, who
was sold to a plantation separately from him. With Schultz's help,
Django traces Brunhilde to a plantation owned by Calvin Candie
(Leonardo DiCaprio), a bloodsport enthusiast who makes his slaves
fight other slaves to the death. Schultz and Django devise a plan to
gain Candie's interest and access to his plantation in order to buy
Brunhilde from him, but of course not everything goes according to
plan.
From
the opening credit sequence, you know you're watching a movie unlike
anything else in theaters lately. The music simultaneously evokes old
spaghetti western music by Ennio Morricone as well as contemporary
gangster rap. Christoph Waltz is a delight, this time playing a good
guy we can get behind compared to the sinister Col. Hans Landa from
Basterds. Foxx on the
other hand is a little flat, he seems to lack the excitement of the
rest of the cast. The entire time I found myself wondering what Will
Smith would have done with the role that was originally written for
him. DiCaprio is amazing as he takes a departure from his usual
protagonist roles as the villainous Candie. There is one scene where
his acting is so intense that he accidentally cuts his hand and
starts bleeding profusely, but doesn't break character. I liked to
see DiCaprio's dark side, it looked like he was really having fun
with it. My one issue with the film is the number of contrivances
that push the plot forward. The coincidence that Schultz is German
and Brunhilde speaks German is just so unlikely that it makes one's
head spin. But these contrivances don't hurt the film too much, they
don't feel like a deus ex machina, but they come close to taking me
out of the movie. This is also arguably Tarantino's funniest film to
date. There is an extended scene where proto-Klan members are
deciding whether or not to wear hoods during their raid that is
hilarious. However, while this film is funny, it takes the issue of
slavery deadly seriously. The film makes a point of showing how awful
slavery was. In one scene a man is torn apart by dogs, and it's so
stomach churning and visceral that it's more effective that Amistad
or Glory
could ever wish to be at condemning slavery. Tarantino strays so far
from what any sane studio would allow him to do that it is safe to
say that Django isn't the only one who is unchained. This is
Tarantino wildest movie since Kill Bill.
No comments:
Post a Comment