majestic performance

Rating: 8/10 (23 January 2013)

Fast, furious and vastly entertaining with a majestic performance from Christoph Waltz. It is long and although does not seem too long in the cinema, does on reflection have scenes, like the carriage ride through the plantation, that might have been trimmed or indeed the KKK scene that reminds of Blazing Saddles that could have been chopped altogether. Leonardo DiCaprio is also very good, as is Samuel l Jackson in the most creepy of roles. For me there seemed to be more charismatic guys than Jamie Foxx at every turn, but maybe that's just me as he certainly pairs up with Waltz well enough in the early scenes. There were less striking panoramas and vast vistas than I had expected in a semi spaghetti western but then it occurred to me that Tarantino always has his cinematographer shoot tight and that many of his films could be transferred directly to the stage without much change so lacking are they in this dimension. Strange, but then dialogue always has been the most important part of the Tarantino product as it is here in several scorching sequences of great wordplay.