Last 20 minutes is a 5

Rating: 7/10 (27 March 2013)

It's always a joy for me to see a new Tarantino on screen, it's the dialogue stupid. But it's also the direction, there's a sense of ease and familiarity, a feeling that he's going to take you on an exhilarating trip.
So it is here, and I'd happily see this movie again, but there are problems along the way. I can't quite believe that Waltz could get himself into so many scrapes and talk his way out of it, it belongs in a more outrageous, funnier film. In a way, I think Quentin is too influenced by those slightly silly 1970s films where anything goes, and it doesn't really fit here. He is mixing his genres, though when it turns slapstick with the Ku Klux Klan, well, that could be out of Blazing Saddles. I don't mind, it's funny enough, but it's a thin line.
I'm not sure Foxx as Django is quite charismatic enough, so Waltz is carrying the movie a lot, a bit of a problem. DiCaprio puts in the best acting performance I've seen as the plantation owner, but he doesn't quite have the stature or prescence to pull off what would have been a plum role for Larry Hagman or Orson Welles in their younger days.
The final 20 minutes goes off the rails and becomes pure fantasy, much like the ending of Inglorious... It's like Tarantino can't follow through, or maybe it's deliberate, as if to say, yeah, this what we'd like to happen, but I won't kid you that it ever actually did.