Django Unchained.

Okay so I really did enjoy this film, but I have a few criticisms to get through before I end up recommending it, so can you at least read my points before bashing me in the comments? Thanks guys.


A big inspiration for Django Unchained was Sergio Corbucci's largely unknown, Django, my all time favourite spaghetti western. So this film had to try hard to impress me...but man it did. The title is largely multi-layered and with a Tarantino film, most people already know all the background and critical reaction so I won't bother watering it down to start the review, I'm just going to get right into it.

Django is a long film...that is ultimately very sparse. What story there is, is paperthin and although the argument that this is as much a fairytale as it is a 'spaghetti southern' rings true, it doesn't need to be nearly as long as it is. Long story short, Django is unchained, does some bounty hunting with a scene chewing German and then Django saves his wife. The end. My complaints with Tarantino, and my reasons for feeling him overrated, are never more apparent than in Django Unchained's runtime. Unchained is a simple, and largely pretty short, story, stretched into three hours. Tarantino is famous for letting his scenes run on for their full length but there just isn't enough meat on Unchained to warrant such a bloated runtime.

Even the action, despite all its fantastic goriness is largely spread out and self contained. To say it feels like the film meanders as it transitions from first act to second is an understatement, to say it comes to grinding halts in places in the second act, would also be an understatement and as the film lurches into its second final act, I'm feeling more exhausted than electrified. And yes, all the performances are fantastic, and the characters are great, even with some muddled writing from Tarantino but the film really does feel like a slog in places. And yes, you could say that is a complaint of personal taste, rather than of the film and I'd give you that but I still think, trying my best to be unbiased, this film could have been shorter and still worked just as well - or he could have just bloody sped the thing up.

In terms of entertainment...I'm not sure I'd use that word to describe Unchained. Entertaining, sure, but entertainment? We have a tendency to censor and shy away from our history, especially in a context like slavery, so although the violence may feel straight out of a comicbook...nothing else really does. You give a topic like this, already filled with so much violence and atrocity and give it to someone like Tarantino? This man doesn't soften any punches. And although I'm not complaining about that for a second, I think this is a pretty massive step in the opposite direction compared to most of his other works. There is that trademark Tarantino flair here but it's coupled with a brutal, unrelenting force that is different to his usual unrelenting brutality. Here he isn't using cinema to make the past seem more fantastic, he is making no attempts at rewriting a better history, instead he simply offers all the facts so many people are unwilling to face and plays them completely straight, and in many ways that is so much worse. He manages to provide exploitation shocks by simply playing the facts straight. And that could possibly alienate a lot of viewers.

I know the film is called Django Unchained and everyone is going on about Jackson's performance, but there is only one character I want to talk about, Schultz. I find Schultz so fascinating, that he may well have become one of my all time favourite characters.

What I think is so fascinating about Schultz is how so very poorly he is written, every aspect of him is utterly fantastic, but Tarantino never seems to decide who he wants him to be, right up to his death, making such a completely conflicted, inconsistent character, that it is utterly bewildering to watch. It is as if the same actor is playing a new character in every scene. He may be polite and on the side of the law, but he kills people, brutally, for money and doesn't care if their kid is watching. These may all be bad men for sure, but he still kills people...a lot of them and this may not be so easy for more mainstream audiences to swallow. There are other iffy parts to Schultz too, he offers Django a third of the money, not half. This wouldn't be much of an issue but later in the film we see Candie and his head slave in private, and the two men seem like equals and these are the villains. Then as your mind wanders back over Schultz's treatment of Django, Django stops feeling so much of his equal in comparison and more like a sidekick. Schultz is a hero in the films eyes, despite committing the same crimes as the villains, because he does it to the villains. The social justice types, those who see the world in black and white, you're gonna find a real challenge in Schultz. Even his eventual decision to help Django get his wife back seems less out of kindness and more sense of duty, leading to a final decision that he makes which completely changes the direction the film takes and actually ends up doing a lot more harm than good, at least at first. I'd be interested to see which area of his character gets the main focus, if there is ever a harder edit of this film.

It's confusing too, in many ways Schultz is both a thinly veiled plot device and also more of a main character than Django is. Jamie Foxx has shown to be a great actor in the past, but when Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio and Samuel L. Jackson are all acting in the same room, Foxx's Django seems to largely disappear. Praise for his hidden depths aren't unfounded, but I don't think it's Foxx disappearing into his shell when having to share the screen with other actors, I think he is literally being forced into it. I mean don't get me wrong, he is great when he gets the screen to himself and certainly looks the part when shooting racist white folk, but with stretches so long between the violence, I kinda wish they picked a lead actor with more charisma, Foxx could have at least put himself out there more. Franco Nero managed to bleed charisma while barely saying a thing in Django and proves he is still the best Django on the block. And let's not even talk about Broomhilda, despite being in many ways what the film is all about, she is barely in the thing and even when she is, she barely gets to say a line.

Thankfully Unchained's problems largely stop with the screenplay. Sure the film could use a harder cut, as this current one feels very rough, but that aside Unchained is a truly beautiful film. The gore is plentiful and deliberately fake in that usual Tarantino way as he directs Unchained a treat. All of his actors minus Foxx are fantastic and every multi-layered film geek frame is as beautiful on the outside as it is on the inside. I had a friend who said this isn't worth seeing in the cinema....but I assure you that it is, it is gorgeous.

So do I recommend it? Nitpicks aside, this is probably my favourite Tarantino film, even if that isn't saying much as I'm not a big fan of his works as it is. Sadly though, as much as I loved this, I really don't know who to recommend this to. Those coming for a violent, bloody, exploitation spaghetti western done in QT's unique style will probably be largely disappointed by just how much talking there is. Those who want to come for some kind of serious drama that finally faces the atrocities of the slave trade will probably hate the film whenever it undermines another scene with cartoony violence. What I will say, is whatever side you're coming at this at, sit through the bits you don't like because the bits you will enjoy, will be more than rewarding.

Think About It!

-Locke, the world's worst film snob.

What would you rate, 'Django Unchained'?