Over the top blaxploitation as only Tarantino could deliver

Rating: 9/10 (7 December 2014)

If I had to sum up Django Unchained in one word, it would be outrageous. It is wild, over the top, often bordering on insane, and an incredible amount of fun. It's seventies blaxploitation on steroids, but with A-list acting, direction, and production values. This movie does for blaxploitation and spaghetti westerns what Kill Bill did for Kung-fu, and also manages at times to be a serious examination of slavery.
Django unchained features one of the least subtle openings ever put on film; a montage of shackled, half naked slaves trudging across desert and mountain, prodded on by their overseers as a sappy country-esque balled laments Djangos fate. This is immediately followed by a scene in which a German doctor driving a wagon topped with a spring mounted tooth inquires about purchasing Django, shoots the overseers when they prove less than friendly, calmly completes his transaction with the man he has just severely wounded, and offhandedly suggests that the other slaves might now be able to kill their master and escape. This will set the tone for what's to come.
T he acting here is exceptional, and the actors obviously loved (nearly) every minute of their work. Jamie Foxx puts in his best work in years as the titular hero. He undergoes a full transformation from wide-eyed, bewildered slave to badass bounty hunter, effortlessly shifting between action, drama, and comedy as needed. On the strength of this performance he will likely be the gold standard of coolness for blacks everywhere, a latter day Shaft.
Christopher Waltz is less varied but no less effective as the genteel assassin Dr. Waltz. He's delightfully eccentric, with a fastidious manner and flair for sarcasm and veiled insults that gives him an uncanny aura of young Mel Brooks. Leonardo Dicaprio meanwhile is the perfect villain. Sophisticated, charming, arrogant, and an utter psychopath, he's the kind of man makes you want to punch him in the face. And Samuel L. Jackson is utterly priceless as the most rabid example of Uncle-Tomism imaginable. I don't know how he kept a straight face while reciting his lines.
And there ever some great lines in this movie. Terantino's way with words is as strong as always, are there are numerous quotable lines, I'm especially intrigued by his use of the N-word. With somewhere north of 200 uses of this epitaph, this movie probably sets some kind of record. But what's more interesting than it's pervasiveness is how it's used. Characters hurl it as an insult, direct it playfully at friends or themselves, or use it casually to refer to anyone with dark skin. It's used as a noun, an adjective, and as punctuation. Depending on the circumstances, the use of the N-word can evoke laughter, inspire hatred for the character uttering it, or pass almost unnoticed. It's used so often and in so many ways that it becomes an integral part of the film's texture and doesn't even seem shocking after the first few minutes.
Extreme violence is as big a part of this film as coarse language, and one of its main selling points. Tarantino has long been an expert at creating beautiful, highly stylized combat and at using graphic violence for shock value and comedic effect, and he uses it here for all of these purposes. There are drawn out slow motion gunfights in which bullets strike bodies again and again, producing red geysers that spatter the fighters and their surroundings. And then there are shooting happen so quickly that the bad guys are lying dead before you realize what's happened.
There are points where the heroes casually kneecap their enemies while losing wisecracks, or where calmly carry on conversations while tracking their targets, with the gunshot providing humorous punctuation their sentences. It's shocking, over the top, and oft hilarious, just as with all his films. But this time around Tarantino has also used violence for another purpose: to highlight the evil and brutality of slavery.
Besides the standard whippings there's a scene of Mandingo fighting, a blood sport in which slaves fight to the death, and later we see a man torn to shreds by dogs. These parts are even more shocking than the infamous ear scene in Reservoir Dogs, and not in a way that's beautiful, entertaining or titillating. They are disturbing and incredibly hard to watch, and are intended to be. Because they are meant as a powerful reminder of the inhumanities that the slave trade bred. This is certainly more brutal than was the norm, but such things did happen.
This is a great movie. It's well acted, action packed, exciting, and frequently hilarious, as in a side splitting discussion of the logistics of lynch mobs. It can be absolutely nuts one moment and mournfully serious the next without missing a beat. It's Roots meets Boss N****r in a way that only Quentin Tarantino could pull off. Django Unchained may or may not be the best movie of 2012, but it's the most fun you'll have in theaters all year.