A bounty should be put on Tarantino's head for what he did to this movie!

Rating: 1/10 (7 July 2014)

Imagine Quentin Tarantino is given the chance to direct "Casablanca," a wonderful love story set against the backdrop of the beginning of WWII. It's an engaging story that pulls you into the plot and characters. You are on the edge of your seat near the end as Rick pulls into the airport to get Ilsa on the plane. Now, Major Stasser arrives and it looks as if all the best-laid plans will be thwarted, until . . . What's this? Rick pulls out a .45 and shoots Strasser in the head, blowing his guts and brains all over the airport. He tosses a shotgun to Victor who blows another Nazi in half. The pilot of the plane sees this and starts turning the plane toward Rick to mow him down with machine guns; but Rick takes out his bazooka and sends a missile into the plane, blowing it to smithereens. Rick turns to Ilsa, blood splattered all over his face and clothes and mutters, "Get the F— outta here!" He takes the cigarette out of his mouth and lights a fuse with it (who knows how it got there?) It burns down to multiple kegs of TNT and the entire airport blows up as Rick and Ilsa walk slowly (of course, slowly!) away. "MF—ers had it coming." Rick says as the screen fades to black. My! What a heart-warming story!
I'm confident that's exactly the type of thing Tarantino would have done had he directed that classic film. I say this because "Django Unchained," is a good movie about 2/3 of the way through, only to have Tarantino's immaturity, silliness, bad taste, smarminess, and a whole host of other unflattering adjectives pop out and ruin what might have been a good movie.
The story is well-written and engaging up until the moment when Dr. King Shultz refuses to shake the hand of Calvin Candie. Then it goes so horribly wrong. Had another director taken control for the first part of the movie while QT was off at a self-congratulatory cocktail party? Did Quentin arrive at that point and place his unmistakable stamp of derailment on the film? Up until that point we had good characters, especially that of Dr. Shultz, who acted with forethought and precision to get him and Django at the plantation of Calvin Candie to rescue Django's slave wife. But, inexplicably, Dr. Shultz abandons his character and shoots Calvin. After this, the movie completely loses its moorings and wanders into a gore-fest, shoot-em- up, that strains credulity. Django can mow down legions of men with a couple of six guns, exploding balloons full of corn syrup and red food coloring to make surrealist messes on the walls, carpets, people, and anything else that might be on the set. This is supposed to be art, when it looks more like a couple of college fraternities having a red-dye water balloon fight. It's not the extreme violence that bothered me. It's that fact that it was forced—yes forced into this movie where it didn't belong.
Imagine the movie that could have been. Suppose Dr. Shultz begrudgingly shakes the hand of Calvin, then leaves with Django and his wife. They then hatch a plan to return to Candieland to get Shultz's money back and free the slaves on the plantation. He and Django return and sneak into the camp where the slaves are. They arm them and convince them to exact revenge on their cruel master. This enables them to escape culpability in the crime, etc. How much better and thoughtful a movie would that have been? This is the reason I have given this movie the lowest rating I could. It could have been good, but chose to follow the Tarantino formula of one-upmanship in gore, which was not the right path for this particular movie. I have enjoyed the over-the-top gore in some of his other movies. The Kill Bill movies and Inglorious Basterds were movies that used this violence effectively. It really didn't belong in this movie, though.
But I have scratched the surface. There are other things very wrong with this movie. The language. Since when did plantation owners, slaves, lawmen, and all other characters in 1850's America become so enamored with the F-word, the MF-word, the SH-word, and all the other profanities you would expect to hear from degenerates in the inner-city or in a Tarantino movie. Remember, this was the era when saying the word "leg" was frowned upon. Lines such as, "Melanie, please adjust your petticoats. Your limbs are showing." were common back then, using the term "limbs" because it was impolite to say "leg." The language was completely inappropriate to this film and detracted from the time period in which it was supposed to take place.
Not only was the language inappropriate, but the music was also. Has there ever been a score less suited to the material on the screen? I heard, spaghetti western music, Elvis impersonator, rap, hip-hop, 70's, orchestral, and other stuff I just don't know. What a mess! This was music calling attention to itself, screaming out "Listen to me! See how artsy I am! I can exist in a pseudo-western! Wow! Ain't I cool!" This was ridiculous. The music is supposed to enhance what's on the screen, not detract from it and call attention to itself.
Those of you who think this movie is a masterpiece, please wake up and open your eyes. You are slaves and can't think for yourselves. You listen to others tell you how cool Tarantino is; so you just assume his movies are good without actually watching what's on the screen. I really think he's the most overrated director working today. Someday, this period of movies will be viewed from a historical perspective and people will scratch their heads in wonder as to why the public and the critics found these movies so enticing. I give Django my lowest rating. Oh what might have been!