Writer-director Quentin Tarantino has never made any bones about his love of Spaghetti Westerns, loading his previous films with extreme close-ups indebted to Sergio Leone and repurposing Ennio Morricones twangy scores whenever possible.
Even Kill Bill, his two-part martial arts epic, drew equally from the Old West and Far East for inspiration. And so, as he enters the third decade of his career, it seems long overdue that the former enfant terrible should make an honest-to-goodness oater.
In 1858, Django (Jamie Foxx), a slave, is recruited by King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist turned bounty hunter, to help him track down three fugitives. Impressed with his charges knack for killing white men, Schultz frees Django and makes him his partner (albeit one with only a 33 per cent share of profits). Utilizing Schultzs aptitude for playacting and ruses, they infiltrate the palatial home of Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), a silver-tongued monster whos keeping Djangos wife (Kerry Washington) enslaved.
While Django is bursting with stray ideas, signature indulgences, and inspired set pieces including a comic vignette featuring the Ku Klux Klan and a shootout that gives The Wild Bunch a run for its blood-soaked money its perhaps most notable for its one key absence. Marking Tarantinos first outing without the guiding hand of his late editor Sally Menke (who he often credited with shaping his work), this marks a decidedly loose, rambling, and borderline freeform entry to his filmography.
Consequently, it lacks the devastating incisiveness that graced 2009s Inglourious Basterds. However, it retains a keen understanding of how to wield filmmaking as a weapon. If Basterds evinced cinemas capacity to rewrite history, Django reminds us of its ability to rub our faces in our collective chequered past.
And whereas Steven Spielberg offered a measured and studious portrayal of the slavery era in Lincoln, Tarantinos approach is visceral and unrelenting, leaving little doubt that hes our leading popcorn provocateur. Curtis Woloschuk
