If you follow director Quentin Tarantino’s career, which started with the success of Reservoir Dogs in 1992, his newest movie won’t be a surprise to you. A signature mix of his music, humour and violence, Django Unchained is another film he can add to his list of award-winning movies together with Pulp Fiction (1994) and Inglorious Bastards (2009).
Set in 1859, 2 years before the American civil war, it starts with the freeing of one slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), pronounced, “jen-goh”.

 

Bought and then freed by a German-dentist-turned-bounty-hunter, Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), Django is recruited as his sidekick for, this “flesh for cash business”. He takes to his new career like a fish to water, noting that he gets to “kill white folks and they pay you for it. What’s not to like?”

 

Tracking down vicious wanted men, the 2 ride into the sunset, killing fugitives and toting back bodies.

While it starts off with Dr Schultz tracking down 3 brothers, the story soon turns to Django as he has his benefactor’s promise to help him rescue his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). The butchered pronunciation of her original German one, Broomhilda is actually Brunhilda much to the delight of Dr Schutlz, who tells Django the story of her namesake.

Left to solitary confinement for disobeying her father, the original Brunhilda was a princess locked away. Guarded by a dragon and surrounded by hellfire, it is perhaps symbolic of the trials Django must face to free his wife.

 

Sold to Candyland, Broomhilda now belongs to Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a notorious slave owner known for his love of ‘Mandingo’ fighting and comfort girls.

After successfully portraying themselves as potential buyers to infiltrate Candyland, they soon find that it’s a land filled with dogs trained to gruesomely render flesh from bone, and fights to the death.

One of the more distressing parts of the film isn’t so much the violence, but the role of Steven (Samuel L. Jackson), Calvin Candie’s head servant. A man with little care for his own, he’s portrayed as cruel and smart, the perfect behind-the-scenes man for his master, who’s probably best described as a child-king.

Played so well by Jackson, who was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction, Steven sends a thrill of terror and disgust through us more than any other person because he takes the same pleasure as his master in humiliating and torturing the other slaves on the plantation, and dropping the ‘N-word’ more viciously than any other person.

While it has a copious amount of violence (as with most of his movies), others have more of a problem with how often the ‘N-word’ is being thrown around.

Unafraid to defend himself, Tarantino stated in an interview, with Cynthia McFadden of ABC News, that “I don’t think anybody is going out there saying that we use the word more excessively than it was used in 1858, in Mississippi.”

The film is long, but it’s worth it at the end of the day. With humour customary to his films, Django Unchained is also dosed with regular bouts of laughter, like when local Klansmen have a hilarious over facemasks. The casting for the movie is also spot on. DiCaprio pulls off spoilt slave owner, Waltz is spectacularly posh as a bounty hunter, and Jackson is a down right revolting, so you can be sure you’re in for a performance by them.

Rating: 4/5

Release Date: Mar 21

Runtime: 2 hrs 45 min

Language: English

Censorship rating: M18

Genre: Action

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Main actors: Samuel L. Jackson, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio