Tarantino Gets Direct Hit With Western

• Film Review By Cecilia Cygnar

The one major issue I have with Quentin Tarantino is that he claims to make films harkening back to a certain genre and ends up creating an entirely new ultraviolent sub-genre in the process.  This time, with Django Unchained, Tarantino says he was calling upon the old Spaghetti Westerns made famous by director Sergio Leone in the 1960s.  Well, Leone never made a film like this one, that’s for sure.

Now, I know some people have issues with violence in films.  My personal opinion is that I watched hour after hour of Tom and Jerry as a kid and I never steamrolled over anyone like Jerry always found a way to do with Tom.  If you are going to be violent, you’re going to be violent…and that’s that.

But, there are violent films.  And then there is Tarantino.  As he has done in all of his films, but especially more recently with the Kill Billseries and Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino’s violence has become so prolific and intense, it has taken on a sort of staged, cartoonish quality.  It’s so brutal and bloody that it cannot be seen or interpreted as real, right?  Well, at least that is how I see it.  Tarantino no longer directs just violent films.  He directs over-the-top, choreographed, excessively intentional brutality.   And Django Unchained is most definitely an example of this extreme violence.

Django Unchailed trailer on YouTube

If you are not completely turned off yet, I will proceed with the movie itself.  Django does exactly what Tarantino said he wanted to do: recall the days of Leone and the Spaghetti Western.   Add a few hundred more pints of blood, harsh language and the prolific use of the “N” word, and here you have a modern-day The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.  

Jamie Foxx plays Django, a slave who is rescued from a life of hard labor by German-born Dr. Schultz, a dentist-turned-bounty-hunter, played perfectly by Christoph Waltz (in his second Tarantino-directed Oscar-winning performance – the first being for Inglourious Basterds).  Schultz needs Django to help him find some “bounties” since Django knows what the bounties look like.  The German and the former slave form a friendship-like bond that leads Schultz to helping Django track down his wife who was sold to a vicious plantation tycoon, played by an over-the-top Leonardo DiCaprio.

The film is a little too long and strays too far from the objective (Django rescuing his wife) at the end.  But, I feel that the film over-all retains its strength from the strong beginning (mostly due to the relationship between Django and Schultz) and ends up being a highly entertaining film.  If anything, I would have liked to see less of Django: Wife Savior and more of Django and Schultz: Bounty Hunters.