Django Unchained

The second of my two trips to the cinema while I was back in Aus, this time I enjoyed the surprisingly tranquil surrounds of the Bunbury Grand Cinema. The film was Quentin Tarantino's latest, Django Unchained and I had a pretty good time while watching. It was only a few days later that a few reservations began to leak out.

Now, I quite like Tarantino as a film-maker. He's smart and he knows his film history. Pulp Fiction was one of the movies that defined the 1990s and Reservoir Dogs and Jackie Brown are brilliant. I didn't like Kill Bill (1 or 2) and I've yet to see Death Proof but Inglourious Basterds was great fun. So that basically leaves us with Django. And (of Tarantino's work) I reckon it's just above the Kill Bill films in quality. Well, maybe quality is the wrong word - more like.....heart or emotion. As with much of his portfolio, Django comes across as a cocky, smirking movie, one that's a little too clever for its own good.

I get the knowing nods to cheesy exploitation films of the 1970s. I understand the majority of the cameos from average old actors/directors/stuntmen, etc. I can see why he wants to pay homage to film history. But please, Quentin, that's enough. Homage is becoming haemorrhage (my thanks to dictionary.com) and I think he's better than that. Perhaps he's just a product of our modern culture. Maybe he's watched so much (top drawer and bottom) that he's had no time to experience things for himself and he therefore needs to ape previous works.

That said, Django wasn't terrible. There were some good performances (Cristophe Waltz especially) and some of the scenes were handled with style, in keeping with Tarantino's visual methods. But overall it was too muddled. Jamie Foxx was just okay, Di Caprio was just under okay - too much oomph, almost popped a vessel - and Samuel L. Jackson was an oddity (I couldn't understand his character's motivation - possibly my ignorance of U.S. slavery history). It was too long, many scenes dragged in order to show off Tarantino's 'clever' writing. This worked for me in Basterds, probably because I was more interested in that particular historical period but it didn't fly here. I felt that it was overly verbose - much like this review.

On that note, I shall edit here. Thank you and good night.