Freedom flows from the barrel of a gun...

Rating: 7/10 (28 January 2014)

'Django Unchained' is an unusually literate outing at the movies based on sound storytelling and carefully cultivated and reticulated narrative pace. It lacks the warmhearted authenticity of the friendship between Sidney Poitier and Harry Belafonte in 'Buck and the Preacher' and has slightly less of the macho swagger of Mario Van Peebles' 'Posse'. But that notwithstanding, it does have something these two noted films lack.
That is a good white person. The kind of good white person whose absence was so conspicuous in Spike Lee's 'Malcolm X'.
The lead character Django meets a bounty hunter of dubious values who yet and still as a character is slightly more developed and intriguing than even Django himself. He mentors and guides Django in the art of killing for money and once Django acquires the requisite skills, Freedom beckons on the horizon like bright sunshine. Together they cook up a plan to rescue Django's wife from the evil castle in Candyland.
So far so good.
Earlier, I mentioned how it might be enlightening to compare this film with 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter'. I still consider this a valid and valuable suggestion.
Slavery is such an emotionally charged subject that it is easy to forget that many countless whites have advocated, agitated and even gone as far as to sacrifice their own well-being and even lives for the liberation of those kidnapped from Africa. For, commercial purposes, it is much easier to label whites as the bad guys and blacks as the good guys and play upon the latent resentments and anger of an audience that has been used to viewing itself in less than flattering and often downright demeaning ways.
This film, to its credit, does not do that. It's characters are as complex as those in the original Western '3:10 to Yuma'. Unfortunately, with the exception of Broomhilda, Django's wife, they are not as sympathetic.
The characters in 'Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter' are sympathetic. Nobody could ever represent poor, redneck, hillbilly white trash better than the homely rail-splitter from Illinois and Kentucky who somehow pulled himself up by his bootstraps reading Euclid and Law books in the fields and the General store until, for whatever reasons, he finally gave his life to end slavery and preserve the Union. When you see Mary Lincoln hiking with Harriet Tubman and runaway slaves to some destination in the North, it rings emotionally true even though it probably never happened that way.
'Django Unchained' has wit and intelligence; not to mention the usual uninhibited Tarantino abandon for ladling out the blood and guts a little too thick. While not exactly my cup of tea, (or should I say hot tomato soup?), it is easy to see how Tarantino has won the love of his legions of fans. But I have to admit I find his use of violence, bordering as it tends to on the pornographic, off-putting at times.