Django Unchained (2012)

Written by Peter McGinn on August 18, 2020

Django Unchained entertained me, for sure, with its taut storyline and its lack of predictability, but it doesn’t rise to the level of my few favorite Tarantino efforts.

The trademark violence is present, sometimes to the point of it being cartoonish to me. It would have been easy to present many of the characters as stereotypical, but the script avoided that. The DiCaprio slave owner is vicious and cruel, but there are flashes of flexibility concerning the status quo with his slaves. And his elderly house slave seems to act more like a slave owner than he does.

A chemistry develops between the two lead characters as they work as bounty hunters, and that is satisfying to see. There are the usual sometimes subtle nods to other films, and I felt the influence of Spaghetti Westerns here and there.

As I said, I enjoyed the film, even though I won’t be watching it multiple times as I do with other Tarantino movies. If you have the stomach for violence and portrayed extreme And presumably historically accurate racism, give it a look.