Django Unchained is a 2012 American epic western film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film stars Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, and Samuel L. Jackson. Set in the antebellum era of the Deep South and Old West, the film follows a freed slave (Foxx) who treks across the United States with a bounty hunter (Waltz) on a mission to rescue his wife (Washington) from a cruel and charismatic plantation owner (DiCaprio).
Tarantino is quite a visionary of the cinematography, a pioneer, a nonconformist and an original director, considered by many one of the best directors alive. His latest film, Django Unchained, wears successfully his signature, presenting one of the darkest time in USA history in a nonconformist manner: the era of slavery, in a South where a free black fella on a horse represents an atrocity.
Tarantino also assumed the role of writer, besides that of director, in this movie, saying that Django was an older project of him. Nothing to be surprised about, considering the fact that he writes most of his movies (don’t really know if not all of them). The dialogue is charming, the jokes are brutal, but hilarious and the atmosphere is real and original in style. The film gives us a lot of quality black humor, violence, gunfight, deaths, pretty much everything Tarantino used us with. A brutal perspective over the slavery in USA, Django Unchained subscribes in the specific “tarantinistic” creation. I think that Tarantino deserves more recognition for the script, rather than direction.
I like the way you die, boy
All the actors have heavy names in the industry and their performances comply their reputation. Jackson has a sparkling and funny character, a grumble old man (a bit shame that he appears only in the second half of the movie, but his impression is strong enough), DiCaprio has a stereotypical rich, plantation owner character with problems resulting from a life lived in his world, Waltz gets a bounty hunter that has no remorse in killing a murderer in the front of his son, who gets out of delicate situation with flair, while Foxx has the chance to portray the eponym character, an ex-slave, “the faster gunner in the west“, a man that goes on the path of revenge and an evolving character as well.
The film presents major and sensible themes like slavery, racism, hate, violence all mixed together in a bold reaction to submission and constraint that define us humans from our origins. Tarantino calls spade a spade in his films and offers original works in an industry where the commercial potential is so important.
Violence and originality in telling a dark story with humor and more than realistic perspective, gives us a film that probably we won’t see for a long time on the big screen. Nothing new under the sun, the same Tarantino style, but yet an entertaining, original and interesting film.
I didn’t say much about the idealism of this movie as I hope that every one of us has seen at least a Tarantino movie, right? Imagine the theme of slavery seen through the eyes of the man who made Pulp Fiction, or the more recent Inglorious Basterds.
My rate: 8.5/10
Sorry
Futility 