Django Unchained Review

This movie was my second Tarantino Film (preceding Pulp Fiction) and I built up a huge dream of how it would play out and how awesome it would be. I was expecting gruesome violence, some humor, a accurate rendition of the Antebellum South, and a unique, engaging  plot that would be a throwback to the classic Westerns of a bygone era. 

I was not disappointed. My conception of the movie was saturated with awesomeness, but the actual film was even more saturated with awesomeness. Dare I say, it was the most awesome movie I have ever seen. Ever. Straight Up. 

Tarantino's work is most known for treading the line between utterly insulting and sickening for focusing on subject matter that people tend to avoid on a day to day basis. He forces the audience to confront socially unacceptable ideas and tabooed subjects. Not only is the violence visceral, but the script is packed full of taboo words, and in this movie, the N-word is the king of all bad words and it is used in nearly every line of the film. He also shows slavery in its most ugly light, not retracting any horrible detail or commonality of life as a slave.

The plot starts as Django is saved from a chain gang by a German bounty hunter named Dr. Schultz, who poses as a dentist and drives around in a comical buggy. He uses Django to help him bring in his latest bounty, and makes Django his protege. Django wants to use the money he earns from bounty hunting to purchase his wife, who is still in captivity, and Schultz decides to help him. There scheme to retrieve his wife involves infiltrating Calvin Candie's estate and paying to free his wife, but not everything goes as planned.

The heroes of the film, Django and Dr. Schultz

The plot is well paced and the suspense is high throughout the movie, until the end, when it seems like the movie is all wrapped up, but Tarantino drags it on a little longer in order to deliver Django a total happy ending. There was never a truly dull moment, even the more mundane parts were punctuated with humor, or the tension between certain characters was palpable. Additionally, classic westernesque music was broken up by Tu-pac songs or other rap songs, lending the movie a curious modern yet classic effect, which seemed to say "This is a western, but not your typical one".

Overall, Django was extremely satisfying and gets a 5 out of 5