Django Unchained

One thing that you can always guarantee with a Tarantino film is hype. The film will often be a financial success before it’s even been made, ending up as the usual bloodbath featuring naughty language. This time out, with ‘Django Unchained’, Tarantino takes his hand to the Spaghetti Western, using his usual brand of cinematic homage and borrowing.

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.