After years of threatening to do so, Quentin Tarantino has
finally made his Western, or Southern as he would have it known. Django Unchained takes place in 1858 in Texas and its
surrounding states. On the eve of the Civil War and with slavery still thriving
in the South, a German Dentist called Dr. King Shultz (Christoph Waltz) comes
across a slave he has been looking for called Django (Jamie Foxx). Shultz, a
Dentist turned bounty hunter frees Django on the promise that the former slave will
help him track down three overseers who Django can recognise. Once the men are
dead and Shultz has his bounty, he promises Django $75 dollars and a horse but
decides to further help the man when he discovers that his wife Broomhilda
(Kerry Washington) has been cruelly separated from her husband and sold to the
wicked Calvin Candy (Leonardo DiCaprio).
As with any Tarantino film there have been moths of
anticipation for the release of Django
Unchained and the fact that it received five Oscar nominations and two
Golden Globe wins before it was even released in the UK further heightened my excitement
for its arrival. In the end the film doesn’t disappoint. It is a fantastic mix
of drama, comedy, cruelty and violence and features a typically excellent
screenplay and some terrific performances but a plodding finale and long run
time stop it from in my eyes joining the likes of Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction at the top of the Director’s cannon.
