Django Unchained review:
A truly wild Western with a killer line-up
Review of Oscar-nominated film by Sunday Mirror film critic Mark Adam.
THE STARS
Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L Jackson, Walton Goggins, Kerry Washington.
THE STORY
Two years before the start of the Civil War, the unlikely partnership of German bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Waltz) and Django (Foxx) – the slave he recently freed – set about making money tracking and killing outlaws.
But Django also has plans to rescue his wife Broomhilda (Washington) from charismatic but cruel Mississippi plantation owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio).
THE VERDICT
When Quentin Tarantino decides to make a Western, you know it’s going to be epic, violent, funny, exciting and challenging. And this wonderfully irreverent and distinctively bloody take on the wild Wild West hits the spot, brimming with delightfully oddball characters and racy style.
This is obviously not your run-of-the-mill cowboy tale. Instead, Tarantino flies close to controversy by setting his story against the violent and brutal backdrop of the slave trade.
As usual his casting is spot on. Waltz (who won an Oscar for his evil Nazi role in Tarantino’s last film Inglourious Basterds) is smooth perfection as a German dentist/bounty hunter and is wonderfully complemented by Jamie Foxx’s steely-eyed former slave.
The early bonding scenes of them tracking redneck villains (Django relishes the fact he can make money killing “white folk”) are amusingly and snappily shot.
Initially, Tarantino pokes fun at the rampant and casual racism of the period – hilariously so in a scene involving a Ku Klux Klan mob complaining about eye holes in their hoods??– but things turn nastier when Schultz and Django attempt to rescue Broomhilda.
Leonardo DiCaprio has a fine old time as the brutal Candie and absolutely oozes slippery cruelty. But he manages to be out-acted by Tarantino regular Samuel L Jackson, playing an elderly slave and close confidant of Candie who is as menacing and controlling as his supposed master.
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