(Movie Review) Django Unchained (2013)

Django Unchained paints the screen red and the box office green

What do you call someone that isn’t a fan of a particular person but can’t help but to be a fan of that persons work? I’m very hard on myself for listening to Kanye West because I think that he is a horrible and ignorant person in real life. I openly make fun of Taylor Swift using relationship after relationship to not only gain fame but to profit from her “post break up” music, yet I tend to bob my head along with a lot of her music. That may make me a little bit of a hypocrite, but I tend to try my best to separate a person from their work. The same goes for Quentin Tarantino. I have seen him in plenty of interviews and have always thought of him as someone that considers himself much much more intelligent and important than he really is. He comes across as smug and with a false sense of superiority. But it can never be questioned that he is someone that will go down in history for his film making. Reservoir Dogs (1992), Pulp Fiction (1994), Kill Bill (2003/2004) have all been films that transcend the normal path of films and stand out as classics that will stand up to decades of being reintroduced to generation after generation of new viewers.  This past weekend I watched the newest addition to that body of work and I admit that I believe this may be the most remembered of them all.

Storyline: Dr. King Schultz (Waltz) is on the hunt for a particular bounty. The only problem is that the bounty he is looking for has never been identified except by a slave named Django (Foxx). Schultz offers Django his freedom in exchange for his help. Django agrees to help him, but only if Schultz helps him find his wife and to free her from her current owner, Calvin Candie (DiCaprio).

 I honestly have nothing negative to say about this movie. I was very uncomfortable when the film first started because there is a gratuitous use of a very offensive word used to describe African-Americans.  Yet, as many have pointed out, to assume that this word was not used as gratuitously during that time period would be untrue.  This movie deals with some extremely uncomfortable truths about our nation’s history that often make you feel very ill-at-ease…as it should. But the majority of the film is handled with a sharp edgy comedy to it that allowed everyone (regardless of race) to enjoy the film together. That is a rarity in most movies that deal with this subject matter.

Worth the admission? Is the “D” in Django silent? Absolutely! Every actor is at the top of their game. DiCaprio was so in character that at one point he slams his hand down on a table, cuts it badly, bleeds, uses the blood as a "prop" and completely sells you on the ***hole persona that he worked so hard to sell during this movie. During that scene I looked at my cousin and said "I think that was real". He was so in the zone that he kept the scene going and never slacked up. 

Speaking of actors that were truly on point in this movie, Foxx and Waltz both deserve gobs and gobs of praise for not only their fine acting, but also for their character interactions with one another. Amazing stuff.