Django Unchained [2012]

The much awaited Django Unchained, Tarantino’s eighth film in two decades, is not anything if not a Tarantino-film, despite it being his first tryst with Westerns. With its protagonist’s name and opening song borrowed from Sergio Corbucci’s iconic Spaghetti B-Western Django, this is an ambitious (in terms of scale), unabashedly violent, genre-bending and deliriously entertaining work of love. The revenge and rescue story is about Django (Jamie Foxx), a freed slave during the Civil War era, who, with the training and help of a smooth-talking German bounty-hunter (Christopher Waltz), goes about saving his wife from the harem of slaves of Calvin Candie (Leonardo Di Caprio), a wealthy cotton plantation owner. Interestingly, instead of the nefarious white slave-owner, the bigger foe for the protagonist turns out to be one of his fraternity so to speak – the slimy head-slave of Candie (Samuel L. Jackson) and one of the most loathsome character imaginable. Restraint has never been one of Tarantino’s qualities. So, understandably, the film wasn’t without its fair share of “fat”. But, at the same time, it was his propensity for cheeky humour and over-indulgence that also laced the film with a number of inspired moments – the scene involving the bunch of nincompoop Klu Klux Klan members was particularly hilarious. An African American cowboy or a rap song accompanying a brutal carnage, were quintessential Tarantino. The sudden zoom-ins and zoom-outs, the grand outdoor vistas, and the high-octane gunfights were added bonuses. Waltz and Jackson provided spectacular turns, while Di Caprio was good too, and the eclectic soundtrack, comprising of both originals and covers, and traversing across various genres, was quite brilliantly designed.

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Genre: Western/Revisionist Western/Action
Language: English
Country: US