Using the mid-life crisis excuse a handful of us hit the town last night to see the latest Quentin Tarantino flick, Django Unchained. Opinion was divided over the merits of the movie. For me it was three hours of valuable drinking time lost.
Django is an indulgent piece of filmmaking by Tarantino. It bristles with all his familiar motifs: snazzy dialogue, quirky music, in-jokes, women’s feet, unrestrained violence, nods and winks to cult films of the past. Set just before the US Civil War it is an episodic, overlong, plot-holed, spaghetti western. The last half hour is a cartoon bloodbath that wouldn’t have looked out of place in the children’s musical gangster film, Bugsy Malone.
I really loved Pulp Fiction. This non-linear epic was filmmaking brilliance. Trouble is Tarantino peaked too soon. As the critic, John Simon said of Tennessee Williams “unlike the truest kind of genius he did not grow artistically”. This could also be said of Quentin who seems to be playing it for laughs nowadays. It could be summed up that when Tarantino makes a cameo appearance near the end the laugh is on us.
For me, there’s only two things good in this movie. One of them could be put down to bias. I am a huge fan of Samuel L Jackson as some of you may know. Nonetheless, in this film Big Sammy (a recurring actor in Tarantino vehicles) is immense as a lumbering, mumbling, limping, dementia-like figure, an Uncle Tom in charge of the slave plantation. Underneath the façade lurks a sinister individual. While checking IMDB for anachronisms and the like, as you do, I came across the fact that Sammy uses the MF word which didn’t exist until the WW1 era. Big Sammy and Tarantino mucking about (MF’ing about?), I guess.
The other highlight, unbelievably, was Leonardo DiCaprio. The doomed Titanic Leo would be a high contender at the top of my list in the Overrated category but here he does a good job. Also cast as a villain, which is at odds with his usual screen persona, he plays the part with equal amounts of charm and malice. These two apart the film is a bit of a shambles especially the unfunny KKK scene that is a farce. The KKK are more like the Keystone cops.
No doubt there’ll be thousands of devoted Tarantino websites dissecting every word and nuance in this film and wetting the bed like untrained children in their praise of this piece of stodge. If you ask me, it’s back to the drawing board for Quentin. Or- what Rocky should have done before the first Clubber fight- retire.
Boadicea's Chariot 