Movie review - Django Unchained

As a Quentin Tarantino fan I was quite excited to see Django Unchained and have been ear-blocking and hushing all that have seen it and tried to speak to me about it.

Last night I went to watch it with all the enthusiasm as a small child would have going to a fun fair but walked out rather disappointed.

As far as movies go, it was enjoyable. Visually effective and the characters were incredible, for me Christoph Waltz stole the show and his character had the perfect combination.  However, I didn`t feel that sense of internal mild anarchy that is usually evoked after a Tarantino film.

Internal anarchy, you ask? It`s a tough concept to explain but to put it in layman`s terms, it just didn`t light that fire inside whereby you desire being involved in something bigger than yourself, something raw and exciting.

There is something about his movie genre makes it easy to identify his work. It is dark and non-linear, separating the good and the bad but in, what I believe, to be a more realistic division and that is one that is very thin and easy to confuse. Tarantino is a story teller and often accused of promoting violence and obscenity when in fact he is showing the perspective that is not clean cut, with rainbows and unicorns.

The story takes place two years before the America Civil War (1861-65) and  is rather simple when you come to think about it. A slave (Jamie Foxx) is `rescued` by a bounty hunter (Christoph Waltz) who requires his assistance in tracking down three men, who were the `masters` of Foxx and his wife (Kerry Washington) until they found out that they were married, resulting in harsh beatings and selling them, separately.

Foxx becomes a bounty hunter and after the winter they set off to save his wife, who is now a slave at Candie Land, run by Leonardo DiCaprio. He rescues his wife after killing lots of Southerns with his super slick gun skills. And that is about it.

Most of Tarantino`s movies have a strong theme of revenge but there is usually other aspects of it that make it a bit more well rounded, which was not the case with Django Unchained. Furthermore, it was long and it felt long which is never a good sign.

Let`s just say... It was no Pulp Fiction.