Django Unchained hits us blasting and smirking, bestrewn with Morricone and enormous type. This is unmistakably a Quentin Tarantino concoction. But this time, 'unmistakable' suggests a lack of surprise. Now, Tarantino cannot be boring and Django Unchained is characteristically wild and precise in its execution(s). This is the story of a German bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) and a slave called Django (Jamie Foxx), who travel through the Old South to rescue Django's wife (Kerry Washington) from the control of a plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his sinister house-slave (Samuel L. Jackson). It is entertaining, of course.
However, whilst always funny, brutal or smart, it does not often enough mash all three together with the imagination of Reservoir Dogs or Inglourious Basterds. They still coincide in key scenes, for instance the first appearance of Waltz. He approaches two slavers and their 'property', and what follows is a shock of amusing words ("Last chance, fancy pants") and cleverly plotted mayhem. Waltz is bright and strangely convincing and, although Schultz is not quite a match for Basterds' Col. Landa, he carries much of the film, taking on its humour and human flaws and virtues.
Meanwhile, DiCaprio and Jackson inhabit Tarantino's line between evil and charm. The director knows so well how to seduce us with such characters. That line he paints is thick and lurid, unlike that etched in black by Wilder and Hitchcock, and from it his films get their drive (certainly those of the last decade). Here we have DiCaprio's sickening 'mandingo' fights, dogs and hammer, all surveyed with a grin; the film kicks accordingly. Both characters (DiCaprio's monstrous Calvin Candie and Jackson's monstrous Stephen) get great and gleeful moments.
Tarantino has set out to emulate the spaghetti western in Django Unchained, taking it to the South and piercing it with slavery. Doubt starts to surface. Humour amid the bloodiest of violence, a feature of the genre, does not always work (the bags-as-hoods skit raises a laugh, but feels out of place). There are stylistic quirks and vintage Morricone cuts on the soundtrack – but you had those in your movies already, Quentin. Are we to take them at face value here? Having the spaghetti served up in a real-life, actual, mock spaghetti western breaks the surprise. Then once Jamie Foxx starts to get his Kill Bill on, those quirks seem to dissipate anyway; so by the time we reach the huge set pieces and shoot-outs in the film’s final act, our sense of place – Mississippi and Italy – has been lost.
Foxx is Django. The D is silent (this is a cool character). Django is a sharp shooter and a sharp dresser. He is a man who loves his wife and is bitterly injured by her foul treatment, which is atrociously believable. His initial tussles with Candie are highlights and allow us to believe that at the centre of Tarantino's audacious story is a fresh character capable of real power and justice. But something is lost as he starts to deliver explosive revenge. He is a cool character. He is an icon, a symbol, a Quentin Tarantino concoction. Django is a vessel for violent catharsis – here to talk funny, act brutal and look smart. For justice to be done, for African Americans to be emancipated on the screen, he must be more than that. But it is entertaining, of course.
7.5
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