A mediocre plate of spaghetti

Rating: 6/10 (21 January 2013)

Deep in the South, several years prior to the Civil War, one professedly fought for the abolition of slavery, life as a black man is never easy. Thankfully for Django (Jamie Foxx), a suave German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) with an innate hatred towards slavery, requires his assistance to track down three outlaws 'dead or alive', thus liberating him from the hands of traders. Django soon discovers an close affinity towards the bloody craft of killing (as well as an indisputable knack for it), especially since he is being paid for whacking off white people. Schultz and Django inadvertently join forces, soon heaping a small fortune in dead bodies. Nonetheless Django's heart and mind is still focused on rescuing his beloved Brunhilda (Kerry Washington) from her employ at Candyland, run by the ruthless Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), who has a fascination and interest in Mandingo fighting.
Another movie, another genre for Tarantino to pillage for inspiration and homaging. Functioning now as Hollywood's class clown, who admittedly has wide film knowledge, but whose interest is focused mainly on playing the funny-bone (and satisfying its blood craze in cartoonish violence) of his like-minded audience. "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" were great pictures in their own right, but somehow it felt like there is something more to the artist than just constant in-jokes and barrages of references. However ever since Tarantino has jumped from genre to genre, crossing off blaxploitation, Asian vengeance flicks, horrors and war movies from his 'to do' list. Now adding spaghetti westerns (with a solid helping of Frew Williamson inspired blaxploitation with a touch of Shaft references). Once truly awaiting for each new Tarantino movie, I must confess that my patience has seemingly wearied out, no longer intaking Tarantinesque prolonged banter and games at referencing. The class clown act seemingly works well for some time, but once you stay in this guise for too long without ever reinventing your jokes, just changing their context, the stop seeming as intellectually substantial.
"Django Unchained" still is a throughly entertaining movie in its own right with the long runtime thankfully bearable without any exacerbation. This is owed mainly to three wickedly spectacular performances by Leonardo di Caprio, Samuel L. Jackson and the crowd favourite Christpher Walttz (plus a host of cameos which will be like candy for film buffs). However various aspects in the narrative are faulty, such as the somewhat needless drawing out of the story midway, the thinly justified plot surrounding the need to purchase a Mandingo fighter for an obscene amount of money in order to retrieve Brunhilda or the dimwitted 'opportunity' afforded to Django to escape capture from Candyland. Meanwhile Tarantino seems less interested in character coherency, than bringing about mindless bloodshed, hence when the collected and restrained Dr. Schultz decides to go against prior behaviour and consequently risk the death of both Django and Brunhilda, the best he has to say is: "Sorry, I just couldn't help myself." Just so Tarantino, who seems less interested with the story, more in the spectacle: producing a glee moment, an obscure reference, witty dialogue.
Nonetheless even in terms of spectacle "Django Unchained" falls pretty flat with regards to the genre Tarantino is obviously pastiching. No scene stands out as memorable (apart from maybe a Mandingo fight due to its wanton violence), despite some inspired performances. Nothing even comes close to the Sergio Leone's classic train station show-down or the shoot-out at the end of "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly". And these are just some of the timeless scenes in classic Leone, Corbucci (or even Peckinpah - at least in terms of gratuitous violence) westerns. The best Tarantino could do was replicate screen titles from the Italian golden era and imitate the long runtime, but none of the tentative magic was carried. Spaghetti westerns may not have carried profound sub-textual messages, but they carry the standard of quintessential movie magic, which makes Tarantino trademark homage even more trivial to watch (albeit given the widespread admiration of his new movie I am obviously delivering a minority report). Profusely violent "Django Unchained" adds to Tarantino's egocentric homage collection, but despite his strong following and widespread critical appeal, it still seems like the amount of people just not finding his one-track creativity entertaining anymore is steadily expanding.