django

Rating: 8/10 (26 January 2016)

His name is Django and as he's quick to point out, the D is silent. It's just about the only quiet part of Quentin Tarantino's 'Django Unchained,' a boisterous, bloody blaxploitation/Western hybrid. What else would you expect from Tarantino, the modern master of genre pastiche, flavorful dialogue, and grossly exaggerated violence? Whatever 'Django''s issues -- and it has a couple -- failing to deliver on its promises isn't one of them. If anything, the issue is the exact opposite.
Though largely forgotten today, the original 'Django' starring Franco Nero was one of the most successful and influential spaghetti Westerns of all-time, inspiring a legion of unauthorized and unrelated sequels. Tarantino's 'Unchained' is positioned as just another in a long line of 'Django' knockoffs -- albeit one with a significant upgrade in the production values department (it even cribs the original film's theme song). His Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave in the American South a few years before the Civil War, where he's purchased by a flamboyant bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz ('Inglourious Basterds'' Christoph Waltz). Schultz is on the trail of a trio of outlaws and Django has the information he needs to find them, so the German former dentist offers him his freedom in exchange for his help. Initially, their relationship is intended to last just the one job, but Django proves himself such a natural bounty hunter that Schultz decides to make him a full partner in his operation -- and to help him track down and rescue his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who has been sold at slave auction to brutal plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio).