Django Unchained (2012) Review

Title: Django Unchained
Year: 2012
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Country: US
Language: English

After Kill Bill Vol.2 (2004) I took a long break from the filmography of Quentin Tarantino. I didn't have an appreciation for his style of gratuitous, hyper stylized violence. Specifically, I felt that Inglorious Basterds & Django Unchained could be exploitative, and offend the marginalized groups that the film portrays. However, my opinion on Tarantino's films changed when I saw Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (2019) and now I'm willing to give Django my full attention. 

With the help of a German bounty-hunter (Christoph Waltz), a freed slave (Jamie Foxx) sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.

Django Unchained is Tanrantino's remix of the American Western; referencing dozens of classics throughout cinema to construct a revenge film that is unapologetically brutal. The film's treatment of its subject matter - slavery and racism - straddles a line between exploitation and truth. It shows the dehumanizing effects of slavery, and the horrors of it, but too often it injects humor in places where it's not appropriate for the scene, which undercuts the established tension. 

Tarantino does a great job at making Django look like a superstar. The cinematography, score and editing do a tremendous job in framing the character as a "Man with No Name" hyper-masculine badass. The film's antagonist, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) is also a formidable foe. DiCaprio acts his ass off to make Candie a memorable character. A less capable Director might have made Django look like a Marvel film. 

Thankfully, Django Unchained is in the hands of one of the rare cinema auteurs. Its writing, directing and cinematography is unmistakably Tarantino. Its costume, set design and production is incredible, evoking Spaghetti Westerns of old. I enjoyed the film and would recommend it.