{"id":435,"date":"2013-01-02T23:31:38","date_gmt":"2013-01-02T23:31:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=435"},"modified":"2013-01-02T23:36:00","modified_gmt":"2013-01-02T23:36:00","slug":"django-unchained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/?p=435","title":{"rendered":"Django Unchained"},"content":{"rendered":"

I will begin, as I often do, with an aside to establish context: I am a Huge Quentin Tarantino fan.\u00a0 I can watch Jackie Brown<\/em> all day, Kill Bill<\/em> may be the best kung fu movie ever, and Inglorious Basterds<\/em> requires no further words from me.\u00a0 I even liked Death Proof<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now, comes the predictable negative statement for which the context was required: Django Unchained<\/em> isn’t really that good.\u00a0 I suspect that Tarantino wanted, in his heart, to make a John Brown biopic.\u00a0 But that would put him into the uncharted territory of making a ‘real’ movie instead of being the unquestioned champion of modern pulp.\u00a0 His decisions would be examined against a much rougher lens than they have previously been and we’d see for good or ill if he has the dialogue chops to dance with the greats.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For whatever reason, he has elected to address slavery (which he has been wanting to make a film about for his whole career) sideways through a ‘western’.\u00a0 The basic plot: A former dentist turned bounty hunter (slight nod to Doc Holiday who was a dentist before he became famous for shooting people) purchases a slave named Django (Jamie Fox) because he needs information the slave has.\u00a0 He’s hunting men who used to be employed at the plantation Django was just sold from.\u00a0 The bounty hunter (Christof Waltz) offers Django his freedom for joining his operation.\u00a0 Waltz also agrees to help locate and rescue Django’s wife who is a slave somewhere unknown.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Also, I’ve heard talk that a German being anti-slavery at that time isn’t accurate, which you ought not to repeat lest you reveal your complete ignorance: Prussia (later Germany) was a land of religious and cultural tolerance due to government policy first instituted by Frederick the Great.\u00a0 Much later when Germany institutionalized rasicism it was by the machinations of Adolf Hitler who was Austrian and imported that region’s historical lack of tolerance.\u00a0 In fact the reason there were so many Jews in Germany for Hitler to kill was the historical enlightenment and tolerance of Germans and their previous administrations.\u00a0 So shut up.<\/p>\n

I don’t have a problem with the acting.\u00a0 Everyone does a fine job.\u00a0 If Django takes to gunplay a little quickly, well the movie was already long.\u00a0 Kudos go to Waltz and to Leo Dicaprio.\u00a0 Leo plays a slaver whose business is slave combat to the death and wagering on said combat.\u00a0 He simply needs to play a bad guy more often.\u00a0 Samuel L Jackson is fan-fucking-tastic as the head house negro for Leo.\u00a0 He’s the film’s true villain.\u00a0 I enjoy that the film hinges on 2 handshakes and that the story punishes Waltz for attempting to take the lead on an issue where Django ought to control the play.\u00a0 An analogy for well meaning white folk trying to fix problems that black Americans can only fix themselves.\u00a0 I don’t mind that Tarantino attempts to address a serious issue with a pulp film.\u00a0 He tries and succeeds in making the idea of race based judgements seem silly.<\/p>\n

But, this was a movie.\u00a0 A rated R movie.\u00a0 And I was pretty fucking bored most of the time.\u00a0 The gunfights weren’t exciting.\u00a0 The violence wasn’t exciting.\u00a0 If Samuel L Jackson and Leo weren’t just amazing, the scenes at their plantation (a bunch of the movie) would have been unwatchable.\u00a0 There was just too much screen time spent boring the shit out of me.\u00a0 I think a rough half hour of film was spent winking at the previous Django film (OMG did you see the Franco Nero cameo?).\u00a0 Buddy, you’ve got the R rating, revel in it.\u00a0 Give me something.\u00a0 Too much talky, too many winks, not enough punch, and really not enough movie.\u00a0 If there’s not enough movie in 2 hours and 45 fucking minutes, you need to redux.<\/p>\n

Granted, this is still waaaaaaay better than Expendables<\/em>, but still; either make a real movie about slavery or a real pulp western that addresses slavery.\u00a0 Nobody is served by this walk the middle path bullshit.<\/p>\n

This can be a renter, there’s no reason to spend money to see in the theater.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I will begin, as I often do, with an aside to establish context: I am a Huge Quentin Tarantino fan.\u00a0 I can watch Jackie Brown all day, Kill Bill may be the best kung fu movie ever, and Inglorious Basterds … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-435","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=435"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/435\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=435"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=435"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieox.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=435"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}