Django unchained and uncut.

Quentin Tarantino's new movie Django Unchained has hit the big screens and divided opinion. Following Kill Bill and Inglorious Basterds I was hoping for a return to form.

Much of the complaint has been around Tarantino's blood lust and overt displays of gore. To complain about this however is as worthwhile as complaining about an England football team under performing at a major tournament, it happens.

The film Django is set in 1858, two years before the civil war and during a time of open slavery. The movie centres around two slaves, marries and then sold and separated for attempting to run away. One of these slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) is found by a charismatic German bounty hunter, Shultz (Christopher Waltz), in chains on route to a plantation. His offer to buy Django is refused with murderous results as the bounty hunter dispatches with the slavers and 'frees' Django to assist him with collecting a bounty.

The relationship between the two men is interesting in as much as Shultz is uneasy at freeing Django, only to hold him until they find the men Shultz is hunting. Django is a key witness as he knows what the men look like.

The movie unfolds to become one about love and friendship as Django is intent on finding his wife. The relationship between the two men blossoms as Shultz agrees to help Django find and free his wife. The pair up and become a team, Shultz casually compares the bounty hunting life to that of a slaver stating "slavers deal in bodies for cash and bounty hunters deal in corpses for cash." The first scene Django rides into town draws more than a handful of comments or stares.

Eventually they find the wife is being held at a well known plantation called Candie Land by a man named Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo Dicaprio and supported superbly by Samuel L. Jackson, who plays the head 'house negro' and is perhaps the worse villain of the two.
The film at this point sways a bit from its path. It is essentially a revenge movie regarding the history of slavery, more than once there are references to a black man being paid to kill white men, though the word black is not the one necessarily used to describe him.

Having at times been gripping we then slip back into some of the more familiar scenes of Tarantino action, with outlandish gun fights and exploding guts and gore which are quite needless. With enough compelling nods to the great spaghetti westerns of the past Tarantino decides to almost undo ninety minutes to two hours of excellent work with a shoot out that may find some looking at their watch. The film around this time could have drawn to a natural conclusion but we instead get another forty odd minutes riding around the wild south and shoot outs.

Despite this slight stammer towards the end Django Unchained is still thoroughly enjoyable and entertaining, my Tarantino days now have a worthy addition. The negative comments coming from some quarters are unfounded and centre, as previously stated, on the excessive gore content of the movie. There have also been some complaints about the excessive use of abrasive language, particularly around the use of derogatory terms, which is difficult to understand considering the period and topic on which it was set. You would not watch a Shakespeare play and then complain about the form of English being spoken would you?