Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino, 2012) - 5 stars

Since his first interview as a director, Quentin Tarantino has made it no secret that he loves spaghetti westerns and will undoubtedly be making one at some point. Sure, all of his films have included a Mexican standoff, but it wasn’t until this year, when he released Django Unchained, that his no holds barred western was let loose on the world. The film follows Django (Jamie Foxx) as he is freed by Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and their mission to find Django’s wife Brunhilda (Kerry Washington) from the slave owning tyrant Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio in his first ever role as a villain).

The film wastes no time in getting stuck into hilariously witty dialogue, nor does it hesitate when it comes to bloodthirsty violence in it’s opening scene. It’s as if Tarantino has written Django knowing we’ve all seen his films before, we know what we’re here to see. And it works. At almost three hours, it needed no longer in the first act to establish anything, and it fits with the revenge theme that we, as an audience, want to get on with it as much as Django does. As the story develops, we are rewarded with beautiful cinematography, montages with some of Tarantino’s best uses of a soundtrack to date (including original tracks from Rick Ross and John Legend), and even some surprising guest appearances.

There is no doubt that this is Tarantino’s funniest film so far, yet also his most violent. Tarantino has suggested two types of violence are portrayed: the “cathartic”¹ killing Django does on his mother of all revenge missions, which, although extremely visual and gory, is often enjoyable and amusing to watch (a sign we are successfully tapping in to Django’s psyche) and in the red corner, the “Auschwitzian”¹ [sic] violence conducted and condoned by Calvin Candie. This, I imagine, has been the source of the negativity towards the film. However, it has been suggested by all involved, this is not Tarantino’s violence; what we see here really happened. I’m afraid, unfortunately, after such iconic violence as Nazi-scalping and Police having their ears removed, it seems like a case of the boy who cried wolf; that no one will now believe him when he is finally telling the truth.

The problem with Django is that it is so closely linked to Inglourious and not in the Tarantino-universe way that his films are usually linked. Our hero represents a victimised ethnic group wanting payback, but as the “1 in 10,000 n*****s” that has the guts to stand up against the tyrannous evil (and remember, Colonel Landa in Inglourious was originally written with DiCaprio in mind). So with help from Ennio Morricone, a spaghetti western-style mission of retribution is undertaken, with Django even pinching the essence of the so-cleverly written language changing in Inglourious’ opening scene.

As a stand alone film (and this is the basis on which I have awarded the film’s star rating) Django Unchained is excellent, Tarantino on top form as both a writer and director, but as an addition to Tarantino’s all important body of work, a notion that he holds so close, it is slightly disappointing to see the usual bearer of such extraordinarily original work deliver a somewhat disguised and re-worked item from his back catalogue.

¹ Both quotations taken from Tarantino’s Channel 4 interview (10/01/2013) Full interview can be viewed here: http://www.channel4.com/news/tarantino-uncut-when-quentin-met-krishnan-transcript