Theater Whore: Django Unchained

When I first saw the trailer for Django Unchained I was excited because I love Quentin Tarantino films. Forget the fact that he still hasn’t made Kill Bill 3 or the movie about the Vega Brother’s that will never get made. He uses the same tricks in his stuff but it always works. That is until this movie. There has been a lot of talk about this movie regarding either the violence or the use of the N-word. No one is really talking about specific things about the film or what the plot is. And for good reason. This movie has a very simple plot.

Django played by Jamie Foxx is freed by Dr. King Schultz played by Christophe Waltz. Schultz knows that Django knows what these guys he is bounty hunting looks like so he kills the guys that were holding Django and has Django join him and offers him some of the bounty to help him find some guys. Django wants to find his wife who may have been sold as a hooker or something. She‘s played by Kerry Washington and I am not a fan of her face. It bugs me.

After a lot of long scenes that are done just so a song can be played they make their way to a place called Candyland that is owned by Calvin Candie played by Leonardo DiCaprio. They have heard that Candie owns a slave woman that knows German, something that Django’s wife, Broomhilda, speaks. So they head there and are greeted by Stephen played by Samuel L. Jackson who is the angriest Black man to ever live. He hates Django immediately and refuses to be polite to him even though he is a guest. Schultz arranges for Broomhilda to visit his room presumably for sex until Django reveals himself and their plan to rescue her. Stephen knows something is up though.

After a lot more nonsense I was like “Holy shit there is an hour left!” This movie is almost three hours long and by god I felt it. This movie dragged its ass. Anyhoot, Stephen reveals to Candie that he thinks something is up between Django, Schultz, and Broomhilda and after a couple of double crosses a lot of people die, people are enslaved again, set free, more people are killed, and the end.

There are more details that I left out but nothing even worth mentioning. This movie blew. I don’t need to ever watch it again which felt weird since I’ve seen every other Tarantino film at least four times. He’s been hanging with Eli Roth too much so the violence is super gory which makes the movie feel all disjointed. One second there’s what is supposed to be humor then you feel weird because scenes are dragging out way too long and suddenly a horse is shot or someone is ripped apart by dogs or someone has their limbs blown off and they just wont die.

I know that Tarantino likes using modern songs in places they normally wouldn’t be but in this case it snatched me right the fuck out of the movie. Its time for him to hire someone to do his soundtracks with someone instead of using songs that are sitting on his shelf. And a goddamn editor! This could’ve easily been an hour and a half but its almost three hours and for a film where the main character has no personality it doesn’t work. If you haven’t seen this wait for the video. If you have seen it and really enjoyed it, I would love to hear why. If its because a lot of White people get shot you need therapy.