Rent Django Unchained (2012)

The critics may like it - but I didn't - Django Unchained review by RP

This film won 2 Oscars and 2 BAFTAs, has an IMDB score of 8.5 (July 2013) and 88% on Rotten Tomatoes, so it must be good, eh? Well, I didn't like it :(

Directed by Quentin Tarantino who has a stellar reputation as a director for mixing humour (well, satirical scriptwriting anyway) often about 'unfunny' situations and with explicit violence. This is typical of his work - only this time I really didn't find it amusing at all. Yes, there's lots of trademark gun violence and bloodshed, but I was left profoundly disappointed - from the awards and they hype I was expecting something better.

The story is told in a typical Tarantino disjointed style, with unbelievable scenarios and characters. In outline, it's this: set in pre-Civil War southern USA, a German bounty hunter masquerading as a travelling dentist (King Schultz, played by Christoph Walz) frees a slave (Django, played by Jamie Foxx) to help in tracking down three wanted brothers. It is revealed that the baddies have whipped Django's wife (who just happens to be fluent in German), and after eliminating them bounty hunter + Django seek her out and attempt to free her by tricking her new owner, a baddy plantation owner (Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio). Much gunfire ensues with bucket loads of blood splashed everywhere.

This storyline is ridiculous, and while the viewer may be carried along by the flow of the film any attempt to sit back and analyse it reveals just how silly it is. And the repeated attempts at 'humor', often in a current-day tongue-in-cheek style, come across as false and patronising as does the repeated use of 'nigger' which while historically accurate would seem to hold some peculiar fascination for Mr Tarantino.

I'll give it 2/5 stars. And did I say that I didn't like it?

Overlong, boring, silly movie from an over-rated B-movie director - Django Unchained review by PV

Another movie that proves that Quentin Tarantino is a B-movie schlock director, whose films are just derivative mash-ups of 1970s Spaghetti westerns and Kung Fu fight scenes.

I disliked this movie - though I had no issue with the use of the N word (and anyone who does, like the African American pity party industry is just deliberately seeking offence for their own ends; in fact, if anything, the brutality against slaves is massively exaggerated - did slaves really fight to the death in the drawing rooms of Southern Plantations? The dates are also vague here...);

I hated the Kung Fu style fights (with silly sound effects), the cod spaghetti western 1960s/70s titles, the ridiculous scenes etc. However, the acting is fine and there are some good scenes - which are then spoilt when Tarantino just has to have shoot-em-up BORING!

This film is also VERY long and feels it; the story should have ended after the scene with Di Caprio's Southern landowner. Good place to end and have resolution. But oh no, hack B-movie director Quentin hadn't had enough blood and guns, so we get another half an hour or more of pointless story arcs.

1.5 stars rounded up.

This movie and those like it deserve no awards whatsoever - unless there is an award for being derivative and boring.

Good entertainment but the end of the story is totally over-the-top and ruins it a bit - Django Unchained review by Philip in Paradiso

The story is quite improbable in more ways than one: it is the story of 2 bounty hunters -- one white, a German, and one black, a former slave (Django), freed by the former. On the other hand, the movie is well put together and highly entertaining... until its climax, which is totally over-the-top and features, inevitably with Q Tarantino, an orgy of violence.

In other words, I found the first 60% to 70% of the film surprisingly good and well structured, with a storyline that holds together and fair acting. But the last 30% of the film ruins it, to a large extent, because it is so excessive. You can tell that Q Tarantino cannot help it: he has to introduce some extreme and graphic violence in the story in a fairly gratuitous manner, simply because he finds it entertaining, in a way that is almost childish. The result is that the end of the film is beyond plausible and a bit nauseating.

I would still recommend the film, on balance, but it left me wishing Q Tarantino could sustain the pace and actually complete a feature film in a reasoned and consistent way: instead of being an entertaining spaghetti western, we might have had a masterpiece, which this film certainly isn't.

The best acting is L DiCaprio's, and by far, as the sadistic, yet mild-mannered, plantation owner.