DJANGO UNCHAINED (Quentin Tarantino, 2012) ***

Rating: 7/10 (12 January 2013)

In hindsight, given how extensively he had been "inspired" (read copiously pilfered) from it in his previous 7 films, it seems somewhat surprising to me how it took Quentin Tarantino 20 years to make his own pastiche-cum-tribute to the Spaghetti Western. Rather than the taciturn Leone/Eastwood hero "The Man With No Name", he picks the sub-genre's second best-known icon to do so – which is just as well since he subverts him into a caustic smart-ass of a colored slave, thus enabling Tarantino to hit two birds with one stone and equally pay would-be homage to such infamous exploitation fare as GOODBYE UNCLE TOM (1971) and MANDINGO (1975).
Where it does ape Leone's celebrated Western quintet is in the sheer time it takes to tell its simple tale of revenge (165 minutes as of this sitting) but there have already been rumors circulating that a lot of footage was left on the cutting room floor after The Weinsteins vetoed Tarantino's desire to release the film in two parts! As if wishing to stress the fact that his version of the critically much-maligned (if clearly beloved of film buffs) sub-genre is superior to and artistically more valid than its antecedents, he takes great pains to point out that his is a "Southern" (set in America's Deep South, y'see) and not just a mere Western. Such earnestness to be taken seriously would have carried far more weight if we were not subjected to so much cartoonish violence (with the fakest use of blood squibs imaginable) throughout the entire film!
Carrying on from his previous movies, however, we find a typically excellent ensemble cast at work here with Christoph Waltz, Leonardo Di Caprio and especially Samuel L. Jackson and Don Johnson (seriously) shining the brightest. Just like any number of the film's blood-soaked corpses, it is also riddled with knowing cameos, from Franco Nero to Bruce Dern – most of whom, buried as they are under whiskers and the ravages of time, went by unnoticed (Robert Carradine, Lee Horsley, Ted Neeley, Michael Parks, Don Stroud, Russ Tamblyn and Tom Wopat); unfortunately, the egocentric film-maker does not even spare us from a bloated, middle-aged appearance of himself as a mining company employee sporting arguably the worst Aussie accent on record!
The central couple of Django and Broomhilde Von Shaft (yeah, the ancestor of Detective John Shaft, dig it?) are competently enough played by Jamie Foxx and Kerry Washington but it is very evident (particularly in the film's tastelessly upbeat final scenes) that Tarantino had Will Smith in mind when he wrote the screenplay; besides, the clearly Homeric (or rather Sigfriedian, given her Germanic name) overtones intended for Django's long-winded quest would have been far more relevant had Washington been made to be Mississippi landowner Di Caprio's mistress rather than just a kitchen maid!! Their past lives, then, are intermittently displayed via a series of rather pointless and gratuitously flashy flashbacks.
Frankly, however, (whatever our personal feelings towards the man himself might be) we do not keep on going to watch Tarantino's films for their pointed character studies but to see how they fare in the "coolly quotable dialogue" and "clevery obscure in-jokes" departments: even though there are predictably reams of dialogue here, on a first viewing only a handful register as memorable at all (chiefly among them the brief exchange between Foxx and Nero on the spelling of the "Django" name; another one between Di Caprio and Jackson regarding Washington's German heritage; and the animated rendition of Jackson's colorful insults usually hurled towards Foxx; Waltz's ludicrous conclusion that "Alexandre Dumas was black" is best forgotten, however). Telllingly, the film's highlight is not an action set-piece but a subdued confrontation between Di Caprio and Foxx on their way to the latter's lavish abode Candyland. What is worse is that the film is oddly repetitive in both dialogue (some words keep cropping upand not just the dreaded "N" word) and action (Di Caprio gets his comeuppance exactly in the same way as a sheriff did earlier in the movie!); Jackson's explosive end, then, seems like an impersonal one given how despicable he had been toward Django, his wife and their own race!!
Finally, the film is marked by some significant changes in Tarantino's personnel, namely producer Lawrence Bender and his late editor Sally Menke; it is a shame, however, that he did not also dispense with the services of The RZA (courtesy of some ill-judged rap rants) on the soundtrack – which, includes the title track of the obscure 1971 Spaghetti Western HIS NAME WAS KING (used here as the theme tune of Waltz's character) and a rather blah new song composed by Ennio Morricone himself! For the record, DJANGO UNCHAINED has been named Best Film Of The Year by The American Film Institute, is up for 5 Golden Globes (but the winners will only be announced in tomorrow's ceremony) and has just been nominated for another 5 Academy awards (but, surprisingly enough, both Tarantino and Di Caprio have been snubbed)!