Tarantino does it again

Rating: Null/10 (21 January 2013)

Nobody makes movies like Quentin Tarantino. I have seen almost everything he has produced (a deliberate exception was "Death Proof") and my personal favourites are "Kill Bill" Parts 1 & 2. Now he turns his talent to the western but, from the garish red of the opening credits, it's clear that this is more spaghetti western than the traditional territory of say John Wayne. Indeed the lead character is inspired by a 1966 film directed by Sergio Corbucci and part of Tarantino's homage to the earlier work is to provide a cameo role for Franco Nero who was the eponymous protagonist first time round.
Some of the trademarks of Tarantino's distinctive style are to create novel characters while slipping in references to so many other movies (including his own). So here we have a German dentist (Christoph Waltz) and a black slave (Jamie Foxx) as the unlikely pair of gunslingers who ride to the unlikely-named slave plantation Candyland (Leonardo di Caprio as owner) to rescue the even more unlikely-named Broomhilde von Shaft (Kerry Washington). Another of Tarantino's quirks is his fascination with language and his set-piece conversational confrontations. In this movie, Waltz and di Caprio give brilliant performances as they duel linguistically and Samuel L Jackson is outstanding as a supreme version of the Uncle Tom character.
Set in 1858 (two years before the outbreak of the American Civil War), this is a long film of two and three quarter hours, but it is deliciously entertaining if often disturbingly violent. Tarantino specialises in revenge, retribution and revisionism. In his last film "Inglourious Basterds", he offered us a vision of the Nazi leadership being wiped out rather than the Jews; here he allows a freed slave to be the nemesis of an outrageously racist and sadist slave owner while managing to turn hooded vigilantes into figures of fun. This is not a film that will be everyone's cup of tea (as we say in Britain) - or should we say goblet of gore - but most Tarantino fans will - like me - love it.