Django Unchained – Review

Few members of Hollywood’s elite ever develop anything close to what could be considered a cult following.  When new films by these special people are announced, reaction tends to be polarizing.  Most people end up not caring and won’t ever see the film, but a significant minority becomes instantly and almost insatiably interested.  Quentin Tarantino is one of these types.  While his films don’t put out Avatar-sized box office numbers, generally the people who do see his films know him well – so well in fact that at first sight of his cameo in the theater almost the entire audience audibly pointed it out.

Django Unchained is film number eight for Tarantino, who wrote and directed it.  Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington and Samuel L. Jackson all star in the film which is a Western set in the Deep South.  Django (Foxx) plays a slave recruited by Dr. Schultz (Waltz) to help in the business of bounty hunting.

The film pulls off the rare feat of being both emotionally provocative as well as hilarious.  You get all the classic Tarantino humor and action but related to a deeply serious situation.  Some of the funnier scenes involve subjects that directors normally try to stay away from in general, let alone turn into a punchline.  With that being said, Tarantino does a fantastic job of knowing when it’s okay to laugh and when it’s not.  Although everything in the film probably isn’t entirely historically accurate, the essence of the hatred that existed and the depravity of slavery are on full display.

The performances of Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz are phenomenal as the unlikely pair of bounty hunters.  Leonardo DiCaprio mixes things up and plays the villain.  He plays him so well that after the film ended I had to pause and mentally separate my admiration as a fan of DiCaprio with my hate as a human being for Mr. Candie.  Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t bad, but he seemed to draw too much attention to himself.

As stated earlier, this is the type of film that you probably have either already decided to see (or seen already) or have already written off.  For the second group, if you are at all curious about the film and can stomach the sight of blood, give it a go and go see Django Unchained.