Tarantino is licking Leono's bowl clean, and claiming the recipe as his own.

Rating: 3/10 (23 January 2013)

I'd like to start off with pleading to anyone who has the intent on watching this film, or any Tarantino film to hold that thought and first think about watching Sergio Leone's 'Money Trilogy'. Seriously, think about it, "I am going to watch Leone's 'Money Trilogy'". Rather, A Fistful of Dollars, For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad, The Ugly; since it isn't actually a trilogy.
Now, this may seem like a horrifically low budget advertisement for a set of films that were created well before my birth. Take note though, that this 'trilogy' was also created well before Tarantino started making films, and I argue that everything Tarantino seems to be acclaimed for is none other than a petty rip off of Leone's glorious masterpiece. (Of which were one was a remake of an even older Japanese film) Certainly without a doubt, Django Unchained is a reproduction of the 'spaghetti western' style. In fact it is so much of Leone's style, that it goes as far as to replicate almost everything those films had, except Tarantino sucks, so he turns this bad-ass style into an overdone piece of Hollywood crap that, if it were a motorcycle, would no doubt begin falling apart when travelling at high-speed.
The central plot targets a bounty hunter, until half way through when it in fact targets slave's efforts at reuniting with his wife. I thought that was in poor taste, as 1) the ending was crap, 2) westerns are better off focusing on things like gold, money, or bandit's corpses, not love and riding off towards the sunset. The film also incorporates music that is so much like Ennio Morricone's compositions, except that they weren't. The tunes would have three or four notes excerpts of a piece from Money Trilogy, and swerve into another direction of much lesser quality. "Well of course, that's just what Tarantino wanted!" Yet that's just the problem, it has been done before, the music, the characters, the plot (except the love story) the action, it's all been done. Tarantino just rips off Leone. Even the way he shoots, close ups, pan outs; really though I am not familiar with the terminology, I feel confident saying that Tarantino is no good.
Aside from Tarantino's distasteful wielding of the spaghetti western, the acting in Django Unchained is, for the most part, quite good. Christopher Waltz is particularly good, his calm demeanour and professionalism is appreciated. Jamie Foxx is mediocre, certainly nothing widely credible. I found the scene where Foxx's character attempts to read rather ridiculous, as I find it hard to believe that any American Slave would have even been able to understand the phonetics of English, let alone read a letter, or whatever it was; albeit rather poorly. DiCaprio was also notably good. Samuel L. Jackson was clever and funny, although generally the same character he was in every other movie perhaps just more suitable in this position.
Thus before you watch another Tarantino movie and go on rambling about how bad-ass he is, watch Leone's stuff. A Fistful of Dollar, For a Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad, The Ugly and A Fistful of Dynamite a.k.a. Duck You Sucker! They are the real classics that can't nor shouldn't be replicated in such poor taste. Tarantino continues to direct in a manner which I find corny in the sense that it is overdone and poorly imagined. Django Unchained is his statement of that.