Django Unchained Review

Django Unchained Review

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast Headliners: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz

Original Release Date: December 25, 2012

Django Unchained is the realization of Tarantino’s dream. It is the pinnacle of his film making craft. It was one of the best films of 2012.  It’s just a really good movie.  The movie shows Django (“the D is silent”) played by Jamie Foxx being freed from his pre-Civil War slavery by an eccentric German named Dr.King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) in its opening moments. Django and Dr.Schultz team up on a crusade of bounty hunting and getting Django’s wife back, and get into various misadventures along the way.

The dynamic between the two is one of the many highlights of the film. Django is serious and a total awesome warrior and the Doctor is just as much a fighter but also great with his words. Many of his lines are quite humorous.  As is expected with Tarantino, there is much humor mixed within the bloodshed.

And oh boy is there blood. The pacing of the film is fantastic, and even though it is almost 3 hours the ebbs and flows of the plot keep the viewer interested. There are some great, classic bloody Tarantino shootouts here. In particular a major fight near the end has some of the biggest amounts of blood, and slow-motion blood, seen in years in a mainstream film.  There are many great parts, and the film gets more intense as the end nears. Aside from the violence, there is some great character development and dialogue.  Some true emotion comes through in this film.  One of my favorite parts is when Dr.Schultz is telling Django about the German fairy tale of Siegfried. It’s just a unique meta moment that really sticks with the viewer.  The legend ends up becoming true in some ways, as Django fights a dragon in his lair.

The “dragon” and main villain of the film is a plantation owner named Calvin J.Candie, played by Leonardo Dicaprio. He does a fantastic job. He is one of those villains that audiences will love to hate. He is so wicked, so racist, so selfish but yet when he dies the film loses a bit. Leo did a great job for a role very out of what he normally does. Also to note is Samuel L Jackson as a hilarious and important role, but I will say no more.  There are not any flaws to this film, but with a few characters missing it loses something.

Nonetheless, the scenery is great, the soundtrack is catchy and amazing (only Tarantino could make Rick Ross and Tupac TOTALLY WORK in a movie like this), and it is filled with great writing and scenes. This may be based on an old Western, but it goes far beyond the confines of the genre. Django Unchained is a must-see film from 2012, one of Tarantino’s top best, and one of the best of all time. It is one of the great epics that come along only once a while.  This movie gets a 9.2 out of 10.