Django Unchained

I honestly don't know where to start with this review.

Having sat down to watch 'Django Unchained' last night I was excited to finally see the film I'd heard so much about. Such was my excitement for this project that I even read the script when it was leaked long before production began and thought it was a stellar story and, back then, Will Smith was rumoured to be taking the title role, so what's not to love!

Unfortunately, my excitement was undeserved and Tarantino seems to have made a bit of a mistake out of the entire film, I feel, and didn't treat it with any of the usual style or panache he usually puts into his projects. There's very little in the way of heart, virtually nothing in its use of cinematic style and, in place of a sense of humour, there seems to be a cynical bitterness we're supposed to laugh along with.

The Basterds with Tarantino.

My ex-girlfriend got me into the works of Tarantino, and I'm honestly glad she did. My initial forays into his filmography featured 'Inglorious Basterds' (which I adored at the time, and still do), 'Kill Bill Vol 1' and its' sister film, 'Kill Bill Vol 2', (which I moderately enjoyed) and, of course, 'Pulp Fiction' which I think is a modern classic to say the least.

Now, the one thing these films all have in common, to my mind, is the style and the unashamed "fuck you"
nature that they all possess. They're ballsy and in your face and I loved that about them, because, while they flipped you the Vs, they maintained a certain sense of complicité with the audience; you felt like you were going along for the ride. While Tarantino's previous films (the ones I've seen, anyway) had a sense of humour to go along with the gruesome elements, 'Django' lacks everything from honesty to hilarity.

Imagine the dry-cleaning...

Aside from the lack of soul, the film also deals with dicey issues for any film-maker, let alone when handled by the ever emotionally ham-fisted Quentin Tarantino. If we're going to sit back and wave the, frankly, gratuitous use of the infamous 'N' word as historically accurate, fair enough, I'll leave that be, but the fact of the matter is even his trademark violence is either underplayed or laughably absurd... and not in a good way.

While, usually, his violence is grotesque turned up to 11, it is at least stylish and truthful to the characters inflicting said violence. However, in 'Django' Tarantino seems to have thrown away all understanding of basic biology and taken human beings to be pressurised sacks full of blood which explode in a crimson shower of goo whenever a bullet gets anywhere close to them. This, at first, is entertaining but quickly loses its' charm and becomes awkwardly stagnant. If left as one or two examples of 'spray' this would've been effective, however, its' overuse allows us to see how truly ridiculous it looks in, what Tarantino seems to have intended to be, his masterpiece.

Lack of Chemistry: Waltz & Foxx.

Even if we ignore these problems the cast works on only the most basic level in that they all turned up on the
day. It's very difficult to see any semblance of chemistry between the usually magnetic Waltz (I particularly enjoyed him in the Polanski adaptation of the Yasmina Reza play 'Carnage') and the oft-entertaining Foxx. Now, I feel that Foxx is, at best, believable as Django, but at worst he is just a talking head whose pitiful task it is to deliver some real clunkers which only seem to be in the script to satisfy Tarantino's own desire to produce a nostalgia filled homage to the spaghetti western.

DiCaprio.

Most disappointingly of all was the under-used and under-written character of resident big-bad 'Calvin Candie'. DiCaprio is usually luminous in his roles, (excluding 'Titanic') and I often watch his
performances with glee and utter abandonment of time or place. Unfortunately, the victim of a two-dimensional character, DiCaprio gurns and flails his way through the film and leaves one feeling a little bit cheated.

Tarantino.

While the title song and other new compositions for the film make a nice pairing with the on-screen visuals, I feel that some of the other choices of music were a little bit clumsy and jarring. The use of rap and hip-hop throughout is distracting and left this particular viewer annoyed. When Tarantino used modern music in 'Inglorious' it worked for its absolute brazen stylishness, in 'Django' it just happens to fall short of the mark.

As if all of this weren't bad enough, Tarantino's own quote/unquote 'cameo' was
arse-tighteningly cringe-worthy to say the least, not to mention self-indulgent, unbelievable and overly long.

Now that I mention it, that seems to sum up the entire film.

Until next time.