There are two levels to the experience of reviewing Django Unchained: acknowledging what it is, and exploring what it’s trying to say.
The first level is pretty easy. Quentin Tarantino’s talky, ultra-violent take on the spaghetti western is wildly entertaining. Jamie Foxx plays freed slave Django who, under the tutelage of German bounty hunter Schultz (Christoph Waltz, sublime), hatches a scheme to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington) from the sadistic plantation owner Calvin Candie (a deliciously devilish Leonardo DiCaprio).
The film is brazen, bloody, funny, tense, explosive and superbly acted, featuring a wickedly witty score. Despite its obvious flaws – a dragging middle act, a bizarrely underused and silent Washington and the inevitable Tarantino cameo – Django Unchained is what the director does best: loud, hyper, visually punchy and juicy.
But having said all that, there is something deeply unsettling about a film that’s so slick about slavery. In this revenge-fantasy flick, Tarantino touches on many intriguing issues, only to abandon them like a child with ADD. Samuel L. Jackson plays a terrifying Uncle Tom figure; a self-hating product of the psychological abuses of slavery.
Alas, with comically cantankerous exclamations of “motherfucker!”, Tarantino reduces him to another outrageous punchline. Likewise, when a minor white character is killed, his blood streaks crimson across white tufts of cotton.
It’s a visually arresting image, but the death has no meaning – there’s no time for that, when there are things to blow up and quips to be made.