2 stars (out of four)
The genius of Quentin Tarantino has always been his ability
to pull off scenes that should never work. Take for example Kill Bill, that sprawling two-part tribute to his favorite
exploitation flicks and a one-stop deposit for all his craziest ideas. In Kill
Bill, he drags his characters through one
extravagant set piece after another and indulges in all sorts of ludicrous
action. Yet somehow, miraculously, he makes them feel human. He convinces us
they are worth rooting for and we actually feel invested in his lunacy.
Watching his work in recent years – both Kill Bill films, Inglourious Basterds, and now his latest, Django Unchained – has often felt like watching a man juggling live
sticks of dynamite. At any moment, it seems, he could trip and the whole thing
would go kablooey right in his face. To top it off, his style is wildly brash
and self-assured, as though he never doubted anything less than the complete
and total success of his manic creations.
His most recent creation is a rescue-the-girl western set in
the Old South two years before the Civil War. A slave named Django (played with
grim, one-note determination by Jamie Foxx) is trudging through the Texas
wilderness on a chain gang when a traveling German dentist appears out of the
darkness. Dr. King Schultz (a delightful Christoph Waltz) introduces himself to
the two slave traders escorting the chain gang.
Like so many Tarantino characters, Schultz has a large
vocabulary and a flair for theatricality. He dances around the subject a while
but eventually makes his intentions clear. He is going to buy Django from them
whether they agree to it or not. This opening scene, cheerfully overwritten and
crackling with tension, is a thrill. Quentin Tarantino neatly lays out the
stakes and has fun letting the situation slowly play out.
Django and Schultz soon ride off in a carriage that has a large white tooth on its roof bouncing on a spring (a wonderfully goofy and
inspired sight gag that, judging by how often we see it in the film’s first
act, Mr. Tarantino is clearly very proud of). We learn that Schultz is not a
dentist but a bounty hunter. He needs Django to identify a trio of wanted men
who previously worked on a plantation where Django was once a resident.
What follows is a series of amusing, if needlessly
drawn-out, episodes that feature Don Johnson as a mustachioed plantation owner
and Jonah Hill as Ku Klux Klan leader. There are some good nyuks had over the
Klan’s homemade white hoods but this leg of the movie doesn’t quite have that
Tarantino magic and the movie plods along for a while until it finds its real
story.
Django wants to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington), who is
currently a house slave for the wealthy and debonair Calvin Candie (Leonardo
DiCaprio having a lot of fun with a Southern accent). Candie runs a profitable
business pitting slaves against each other in fight-to-the-death matches at his
manor – named Candyland (nyuk, nyuk) – so Django and Schultz devise a plan to
dupe Candie into selling them Django’s wife by posing as slave traders
interested in buying one of his prize fighters.
Django Unchained is
on more sure footing in the scenes at Candyland, largely thanks to Mr.
DiCaprio’s effortless charm and a fine turn by Samuel L. Jackson (under some
fantastic old man makeup) as Stephen, Candie’s head slave. Stephen, it turns
out, is actually the most interesting character in the film and the whole third
act turns on the keen observations of this loyal family servant.
Quentin Tarantino is a master at crafting plots that
gradually build in tension and complexity, and for a while Django Unchained seems poised for some last unexpected turn to
resolve Django and Schultz’s crafty bait-and-switch scheme. But instead, Mr.
Tarantino opts for a lazier ending. In the final half-hour, the movie devolves
into a gratuitous and numbingly uninventive bloodbath that cheapens everything
that came before it.
Quentin Tarantino, usually such a smart writer, embraces all
his worst impulses here. The violence is bloody and over-the-top but the final
product resembles something a Tarantino imitator might have churned out –
stylized and violent but devoid of anything thematically substantial.
The cast is also noticeably lacking in female roles. Sure,
the worlds of Mr. Tarantino’s characters are typically male-dominated but he is
usually good about writing at least a few strong women into his films. Kerry
Washington, however, is relegated to playing the weeping damsel in distress and
the other women in the film are little more than pretty faces.
And while no one expected this film to be racially
sensitive, there is no doubt that a major point of contention for many will be
Mr. Tarantino’s overuse of a particular racial slur. Granted, the movie’s historical
context does allow him to use the word but it gets tossed
around so frequently and with such relish, it’s distracting. It is easily the
most said word in the film, which reduces the impact it might have had if
uttered less often.
There are moments when Django Unchained clicks and might have held up as a solid, if not
classic, Tarantino film. Mr. Tarantino’s comedic timing is still sharp and his
love of dialogue is as apparent as ever. But the ending is such a
disappointment it nearly ruins the whole movie. Though it pains me to say it,
for the first time, Quentin Tarantino drops the dynamite and blows himself up.
- Steve Avigliano, 1/5/13
