Django Unchained - Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio

The Gist

Django Unchained
Buy it here and support our blog

Dr. King Schultz, bounty hunter, buys Django out of slavery to help him find three white men who used to work on the plantation where Django had just been sold from. When Django shows a natural talent for bounty hunting, the two men strike up a partnership, spending the winter killing criminals for money. As they get closer, they decide to go on a search for Django's wife, who was sold away from him when he was sold. Their search brings them to the plantation of Calvin Candie, where they have to pull off a crafty scheme to save Django's wife from the cruelty of the slavery system.

What We Think
Reviewed by Living Destiny
Run Time: 165 minutes
Rating: R
This movie is so long. So. Long. It's nearly three hours long. I'm having a hard time getting past the sheer length of this film. It probably doesn't help that I went to see a 9:45 showing, so I got out at almost 1 in the morning. But seriously, it's so long. And the worst part is that it feels long. A three hour film can go by in no time if it is absolutely captivating and fast paced. Django Unchained, despite all of its hype, wasn't. There were a ton of little montage shots, and even some whole scenes, that could have been cut from the movie entirely, and it wouldn't have suffered. The thought process behind a movie is that every detail has meaning. If it doesn't characterize or progress the plot, it has no purpose. And some of the shots did characterize, but still felt unnecessary. Most of them didn't do either, and that gets me neatly to my next point.
This movie is directed by Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino is very much a hit or miss director. His most famous movie is probably Pulp Fiction, which most people either love or hate. Basically, he gets strong reactions. But he's so excessive in his effects. Characteristics of his movie are lots of swearing, lots of blood, and lots of explosions. And that's usually too much, but he somehow manages to outdo himself in this movie. I'm not affected by the sight of blood in the least, and even I was cringing at this one. Gunshots that would in real life produce practically no blood, on the screen produce gushing streams that shoot five, ten feet out from a body. It's totally unrealistic, and honestly it's just gross. And some of the scenes are wicked graphic. Fights to the death, whipping, a man literally being torn apart by dogs. There's no purpose to it except to shock the audience. That's really all Tarantino can do. Flashy, shock movies that are intended to get a rise out of the viewers. This is the first movie I've seen of his that had serious potential as a script, and all he could do was drag it through the mud. Granted, it did have some redeemable qualities, even some good scenes, but I would chalk that up to a fluke, and not give credit to Tarantino. Also, there was way too much use of the 'n' word. I know it's set in 1858, and that's slavery time, but it was so much. I think any word has value, but overuse of a word devalues it, and that's what happened here. They said the 'n' word so much, it ended up doing nothing at all. Which brings up a question: is this movie supposed to be a satire?
So, is it? I couldn't tell, and that frustrated me. Sometimes it leaned that way. The excessive gore, coupled with the Mark Twain-esque use of the 'n' word, made it seem like a satire. There was even one scene involving the KKK that was actually funny, and clearly poking fun at racism as an organization. But that was the only funny part of the movie. So maybe it wasn't a satire at all, maybe it was supposed to be serious. A hard hitting drama with a powerful message. So why was that funny part in there? And what's with the grotesque amount of gore and foul language? It would appear that this movie is trying to be two totally different types of movies, and ends up being a confusing mess. 
But there's a good side to every story. The script of this movie, minus the gratuitous swearing, was actually well written. It was an interesting story, although I think realistically it should have been broken into three movies, because I think there were three distinct sections of the story. Which makes it surprising that it wasn't split into thirds, given the recent trend in Hollywood to stretch every plot line out to kingdom come. It was a good story that could have been made into a truly great movie. The acting was also, for the most part, really well done. Jamie Foxx was ok, but I'd say the stars are Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Samuel L. Jackson. Christoph Waltz, the German man, was fantastic. He was probably my favorite character, because he was cunning and he knew exactly where his morals lay, even if they weren't the typical morals of society. Leonardo DiCaprio was the perfect bad guy, which was surprising to me, because I've never seen him play the villain. He was wonderfully greasy and sleazy, and he made me hate him more than I thought I could. Samuel L. Jackson was more of a minor character, but he was powerful. He played the slave master of the house, basically the head slave, whose allegiance was in more with Candie and the white folk than his own people. He was clearly intelligent, but knew his place, and his character stole the show as the real bad guy in the story. He was incredible. The only actor I really didn't like was Kerry Washington, who played Django's wife Broomhilda. She screamed too much. And I know she was a deeply abused slave, but seriously. Every time someone looked at her funny she screamed. It got as old as all the blood. 
Overall, I'm disappointed. This could have been so good. There was so much potential just waiting for a spark. And then Quentin Tarantino threw copious amounts of blood all over it, and the spark went out. The acting was good, but that wasn't enough to redeem the movie as a whole. This movie should have stayed chained.

Real Teen Rating ~ C: If there's nothing else to see...