Now, as you may have guessed, I’m not much of a Tarantino fan. There’s
something about his films, and the man himself, that just irritates me. While
his films are generally entertaining gibberish, I’ve always been left a little
annoyed by them. I did enjoy ‘Pulp Fiction’ and Inglorious Basterds’, but on
the whole, his films just don’t really do it for me.
As with ‘Inglorious Basterds’ before it, ‘Django Unchained’ was always
going to come amid a wave a controversy. This time Jewish revenge against the
Nazis is replaced African-American revenge against their white slave owners.
With the main talking point about the film creating enough ‘controversial’
publicity, let’s get on to talk about the film itself.
Plot-wise, ‘Django Unchained’ is quite simplistic: a freed slave sets
about on a journey for revenge and to find his wife. Freed by and partnering a
German bounty hunter, he travels across America, often finding himself
unwelcome due to the colour of his skin and/or his freeman status. Close to
their goal, the pair’s plotting and deceiving is soon unearthed and an
inevitable bloodbath ensues.
At close to three hours in length, watching this is like overtaking a
National Express coach (not my words). Large amounts of the film are filled
with long stretches of dialogue and storytelling, particularly by Christopher
Waltz and Leonardo DiCaprio. While both are good in their respective roles,
they do feel designed to dominate scenes, with a ‘remember how much you liked
Waltz’s monologues in ‘Inglorious Basterds’?’ feel to them. There are also drawn out moments to
facilitate a piece of music that have little purpose beyond aesthetics.
There’s a bit too much self-indulgence on display here. The overuse of
special effects in shootouts goes a bit too far, being neither frightening nor
comic. The script – that a decade younger Spike Lee would have had a lot to say
about – is full of parables and monologues, many of which are unnecessary.
This is all at the cost of creativity. While much of what has appeared
in his previous films are ideas taken from other, lesser known works, there is
still a sense that he is trying to add something to them and make them his own.
But with ‘Django Unchained’ it seems that a long-winded script, overly-comical
gunplay and a controversial subject matter are the draws, with none really
enough to make me want to sit for 165 minutes, especially when it started with
Villa 2-1 up against QPR and I had to wait a good three hours to learn of the
final score.
