Fritz, the horse.

Rating: 6/10 (18 January 2013)

"Django" has all of the Tarantino ingredients in it, yet it fails to be as appealing and creative as some of his previous films. Most notably, in comparison to the 2009 "Inglourious Basterds", this film lacks the enthusiasm and originality in the storyline and in the depiction of the characters. Also, and this is a surprise, the dialogue is in many points inferior to any other Tarantino movie so far (even from "Jacky Brown"). The music score is excellent once again, although a bit puzzling at times, it seems to be cut off from what is depicted on screen and does not blend harmoniously with the mise en scene like the music score in "Kill Bill" did.
The second half of the movie is greatly superior from the first, although there is a key difference here. Di Caprio's character gets the better part of the dialogue and the rest of the surrounding characters get more cartoonish in comparison, leading to a "Wild Bunch" - like type of slaughter in the Big House that is in all aspects one of the worst choices in the directors career. And why is that? Well, while in Kill Bill V.1, the sword slaughter was perfectly combined and a natural outcome from the rest of the movie (the Bride is depicted as a perfect human cartoon character), in "Django" the main character is more of a man than a cartoon. The "flesh" that we keep hearing about in the entire film is finally depicted in front of the camera in a brutal manner, but we simply don't care as much as we should. We are not that involved in the story.
In conclusion, "Django" is closer in style and manner to "Death Proof" than "Inglourious Basterds" and that is not a good thing. And not because the former is a bad movie (actually "Death Proof" was and was supposed to be, much funnier then "Django"), no. It is the fact that in order to achieve a perfect combination of history, fun, politics and drama, Tarantino lost his balance in the script. It simply cannot be the case that in a Tarantino film the only piece of great and firing dialogue is delivered late, in the second part of the film (almost 120 minutes in to the movie) - the scene where Di Caprio has a skull in front of him and shares his theories with us.
Strong points: Waltz, Di Caprio, Fritz the horse, music score, second half
Average points: Foxx, first half, female characters
Poor points: Dialogue(!), final slaughter scene, Samuel Jackson
Overall: 6/10