Good if you like Tarantino, otherwise stay away...

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2013)

I want to first state that I'm not particularly a fan of Tarantino films. I don't have an issue with them really and they are enjoyable in their own right but I definitely don't get the heaps of praise. I think his best stuff was probably Reservoir Dogs and Inglorious Bastards myself. I found Inglorious to have much more engaging characters and just be much more interesting and compelling. Django felt like a canvas for wanton violence like usual. Not to say Inglorious didn't have it's own level of wanton violence but at least things seemed a bit more justified here and there.
My issues with the film aside the acting was wonderful. Everyone really invested in their roles and made them their own. Leo was a bit campy and not really convincing and Samuel L Jackson was his usual moronic self. The less we see of him the better in films. I haven't seen anything good from him since Unbreakable. Christopher Waltz, for me at least, really runs the show. He lends such brilliance to his polite bounty hunter. And it's even a somewhat comical role as well given the different scenarios. So I definitely enjoyed his character best.
As far as plot...what plot you could say. It's pretty much a basic revenge film with some twists. The film jumped around a bit as Tarantino films usually do. There were of course several scenes or sub plots that were entirely unnecessary but Tarantino had a few buckets of blood left that were being unused so he thought, "Heck, let's add this scene and have him kill a few more people." I think my favorite tangent was Don Johnson as a plantation owner and a KKK founder. His role, and the sequences thereafter were rather amusing. In general though I felt like the film took WAY TOO LONG to get to the end. We all knew what would happen pretty much from the start. It just took Tarantino nearly hours to get there with what he thought were good "twists".
Ultimately if you like Tarantino films you probably won't be disappointed. Myself I'm a cautious fan of parts of his work but I generally am not impressed since it always feels like a lot of grand standing and look at me kind of crap. I heard this one was his "best" so I was curious. Not to mention the cast and theme warranted at least one viewing. But sadly I came away disappointed with a few gem scenes and the rest pretty much Tarantino tripe.