Django Unchained

Quentin Tarantino professes his love for tough guys with a gun at their waist and no matter how he reshapes the whole Western world to fit his own image, he never sets foot for a moment out of the story, the homage, or the timely light-hearted mood. And regardless of whether there's rap playing in the soundtrack, the main hero is putting on sunglasses, or the irresistible Leonardo DiCaprio is wildly overacting, I still know that this is essentially a perfect genre film. It's just that its director, despite his outstanding work, is becoming a victim of himself. After the emotionally richer Kill Bill and the perfectly polished Inglourious Basterds, there is simply nowhere else to go with a quest for revenge or infinitely unsettling dialogue with a grounding progression. (01/14/2013)

I was afraid, I don’t like westerns, but I like Tarantino. Fortunately for me, Django Unchained is not even close to a thoroughbred western. It’s just a fun Tarantino movie in the Wild We… South mixed with blaxploitation. After 1200 comments in Filmbooster, it’s hard to come up with something original or interesting to say about Django, so what follows is a couple of personal incoherent rants and observations… The scene with the predecessor of the Ku-Klux-Klan is very funny. The carriage wandering around the American wilderness with a giant model of a tooth on the roof is incredibly cool. Hans Landa can be a nice guy. I wouldn’t like to run into DiCaprio with a hammer. Samuel. L. Jackson is a badass. I liked Inglorious Basterds better :) (02/01/2013)

Not much of an homage to spaghetti westerns, despite Franco Nero's cameo, rather, some kind of (commendable) anti-racist prod that doesn't even make much sense at the end. The experience resembles a sine wave, as long as Waltz is on screen with his enthusiasm, it's a treat that honours even Western rules. But from the moment we meet DiCaprio, the film goes downhill in quality, where the genre's name would best fit the phrase "typical Tarantino crap" and where the "warrant in your pocket" moment (what a coincidence!) is such a cheap, illogical screenwriting crutch that only a naive viewer can buy it. I could expect anything from Tarantino, but not a cliché like this. And the violence, with hectolitres of squirting ketchup, is so over-stylized (especially in the final carnage) that I'm actually tired of it. PS: The scene with the Ku-Klux-Klan will make anyone laugh, myself included. (01/13/2013)

Black dynamite. A provocative kick in the balls, which Tarantino inflicts with xenophobia and racism in the field of the "white man" genre, such as the western (but at the same time, in a way, he does not spare the "niggaz"). If I am to blame Django Unchained for anything, it would be that, in addition to the fact that some parts really look like they were edited by a high negro using autogen, then perhaps just its very digital look. I know that Tarantino simply wanted to give the western locations a modern patina, and I know he didn't want to unnecessarily tie himself down with spaghetti western conventions, but in some places Django Unchained looks stylistically quite weak (rather, it lacks style - I think it is important to see Django Unchained in the movie theatre mainly so that one can enjoy the choruses of laughter). But I would end the criticism there. Perfect punch lines (they don't hit you - they tear your balls out and stuff them down your throat), great acting attached to great characters, absurd black humor, irresistible volatility between sublime epics, blaxploitation and grind-house blood, dramatic timing that Tarantino won me over with despite my years of resistance in Inglourious Basterds. What I enjoy most about his new films is how he turns his light, bloody and disrespectful hand against great history and "sociocultural" concepts. This black version of the Nibelungs, where the white pride of the KKK can't see through the bags on the road and a German drinking beer is fighting against the colonels in white... well, it just grabbed me by the balls. (01/08/2013)

Anyone expecting a regular spaghetti western will be sorely disappointed. It is more of a typical verbose Tarantino movie with western scenery than a tribute to the genre (or genres) with everything they entail. It was to be expected, but it is still a crying shame, because if anyone, Quentin should have tried to challenge the holy Italian Trinity of Sergios (Leone, Sollima, Corbucci) in their sovereign field. Anyway, it doesn't matter “what it is/isn't“, when it’s such a damn good and stylish movie. Of course, the more you watch it, the more references you notice, but ultimately it doesn't matter if you know which genre classic is referenced by the composition “Für Elise" being played on a harp in the saloon or by the other hundred allusions to this and that; Fans of Monty Python humor will also find something to enjoy in the scene involving the birth pains of a beta version of the Ku Klux Klan… There are only two blemishes. First, the length. It’s too short and therefore in many places inappropriately hurried. And then the finale which lacks a tension-building, face-to-face duel. Which is an unforgivable faux pas, Quentin! (01/14/2013)