It'll have me singing "Djangoooooo" for a while now

Rating: 8/10 (28 December 2012)

Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained rebounds where the ho-hum Inglourious Basterds sadly floundered. It's valid to dub this a companion piece to Basterds, seeing as it inhabits the same tone and plays along with the idea of revisionist history in ways the public never really thought imaginable. Quentin Tarantino has and will always be a genre-enthusiast, so we begin by addressing the fact that this film erects the style germane to spaghetti westerns of the 1950's and the 1960's (the title character, "Django" is taken from the 1966 Sergio Corbucci film, who was originally played by Franco Nero, who has a cameo in this picture as well). Tarantino achieves the look and feel by incorporating easy-on-the-eyes cinematography, familiar close-ups, the gritty look of the Deep South, and the bold, audacious red-letters during the opening titles and part of the closing ones. The film is as stylistically potent as Tarantino has ever been.
Our story (told in an unusually linear fashion) concerns Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave who is bought by the dentist turned bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), who has made a habit of listlessly wandering the terrain of the south, shooting those made famous on paper posters that are plastered all around town and proudly collecting the check. He teaches Django much of the same, how to protect himself and to conduct himself formally and ominously to evade certain doom in this time of intolerance and disrespect towards blacks.
Django informs Dr. King Schultz of his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), and states both of them were separated when being bought by different men. Schultz discovers that Broomhilda was purchased by Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a spoiled, sadistic animal who resides in a mansion called "Candyland," where black men are trained to fight (called "Mandingos," more commonly) and black woman are forced into prostitution.
The first half of Django Unchained is shamelessly violent and provides nonstop hilarity, as both Django and Schultz get acquainted with one another and become two of the most charismatic duos in the 2012 year of film. The second half is when the film shows us its real roots, a revenge flick on one hand, but a love story on the other, as the two men arrive at Candyland, running into Candie and his loyal house-slave Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson in one of the most un-Samuel L. Jackson-like roles), and try to strike a deal to buy Broomhilda from Candie, while covering up the fact that both her and Django are married.
There are three things I've grown to expect in a Tarantino project and they are all here and present. Number one is an unbelievable wealth of talent. From not only Foxx as the title character, but Christoph Waltz who gave arguably the performance of the decade in Inglourious Basterds, this film is wonderfully cast and the performers here are captivating as they inhabit characters of several personalities accentuating them professionally because of their solid dialog. DiCaprio plays a villain full of menace and evil, and the long sequence at dinner, where we truly see his uncompromising menace is where we see it unfold. And it must be reiterated that Samuel L. Jackson gives a terrifically unconventional performance here one could even dub a character actor role.
Number two is a hard-hitting first act, a satisfying second act, but a rambling and repetitive third. Django Unchained runs about twenty minutes too long, and because of that, one who merely enjoys this picture on its own merits, who isn't a passionate cinephile nor a devoted Tarantino fan could become tired or bored. That's the problem when you've built up such a strong and loyal fanbase is that by giving them what you want so many times and in mass amounts, you run the risk of turning off people who've tried to connect or enjoy your work and you make it more difficult for those on the fence to appreciate it. I've long-admired Tarantino's love for cinema and his extremely entertaining pictures, but I have my limits for every director and while he knows how to give cinephiles what they adore, he too knows how to push many buttons.
Number three is his love for movies and the little aesthetics that go behind making every film work. This is shown explicitly in Django Unchained. From the obscure music choices (Luis Bacalov for the opening, Rick Ross and Tupac for a montage or two), to the detailed settings, to the impervious script, Tarantino gathers everything that makes films memorable, stylish, potent experiences and uses them to this film's advantage.
Finally, too much has been made about how "racist" Django Unchained may be. The answer is in no way is this picture racist. It deals with racism, so perhaps people make too many feeble generalizations and forget to say that. As unabashedly violent and unapologetically gruesome certain sequences are, Tarantino constructs this picture elegantly and respectfully, often making the blacks smarter and more educated than the whites, and never shying away from the fact that slavery was a disgusting, inhumane act that has and will forever stain the fabric of humanity. To call this film racist for the sole purpose that it uses "the n word" and features slavery and not addressing its plot, content, or direction is a misguided, terribly underfunded statement.
To scale this as an entire film is a bit tricky. At times uneven and unbalanced, and at others, devilishly entertaining, incredibly raucous, and persistently bloody, Django Unchained is an obscure work of art. To simplify my recommendation, so as not to turn off potential viewers who've likely been rather turned off by the subject matter or whatnot, I must say, there's something hear for all too enjoy, cinephile or casual moviegoer. It'll have me singing "Djangoooooo" for a while now.