Django Unchained

“Apparently shooting a slave owner is only funny to me and Neil. But if I could I’d do it every week! ‘ Dave Chapelle. In this run of revenge movies Tarantino has made including Kill Bill, Inglorious Basterds, and now Django Unchained, how can you not have fun at the movies? It’s what movies are supposed to be, living out childhood fantasies through film. George Lucas made billions off of it by making the Dark Side all Nazis. The best part of it is, is that he’s not really playing the villains up just for cinematic purposes .  Most Nazis and slave owners were unbelievably bad people or at least they became this way once the mentality of the era took over their daily lives.  Jews and Black people weren't really considered human, so why not burn or beat them to death as if it were a sport. As a kid watching Roots or one of the two hundred Civil Rights made for tv movies that came on, I kept thinking to myself that I am way too crazy to let someone beat me or force to me to drink from another water fountain. I like white women too much for this lifestyle. They’d have to kill me! “Where the white women at?” Sorry, I have to say that at least once a day.

 So my brother and I would always imagine crazy scenarios in which we’d break free while of course killing a few slave owners, field crack whippers (this is where the term crackers came from), and maybe the house n word on our way out. And I am sure my Jewish brothers and maybe white people who hate the Japanese did something similar while growing up. So naturally when these movies came out we all ran to the theater and left with big grins on our faces. 

 I would’ve been at the theater opening night but due to bad weather, I had to wait for the next afternoon. The movie starts out with a Western song Django by Luis Bacalov to let you know that what you’re in for is an old school Technicolor Western. The opening scene involves the purchasing of Django (Jamie Foxx) by Dr Schultz (Chrstoph Waltz) from two couriers who are not willing to let him go. In a way only he can, Waltz steals this scene with his mannerisms, voice inflection, and his general presence. Once he’s been freed, he explains to Django that he hates this entire idea of slavery but that he will temporarily own him while he helps him track down three brothers that have a bounty on their head. He also clues him in to the fact that they will always play the role of characters to help them infiltrate wherever they need to go to get the job done. This leads to one of the funnier scenes of the movie where he allows Django to pick out his own clothes. 

Once they track down the three brothers Schultz notices that Django  has a natural talent for killing people and decides to recruit him for the winter to help him collect bounties. I should also mention that Don Johnson steals every scene he is in. He plays a slave owner at the plantation the three brothers happen to be working on. Anyway, once this job is completed, Schultz learns that Django’s wife had been taken from him and sold to the evil Calvin Candie who’s own infamous plantation is known as Candieland. Once he hears the story of his wife’s upbringing an instant bond is formed between the two and they set off on a journey to get her back.

Foxx being a proud man who worked hard to reach where he is now, initially had a hard time playing the role of someone who was at first submissive, couldn’t read, and a considered sub human until Tarantino sat him down and explained that the only way he could truly make this movie work was to put away his Louis Vuitton bag and Range Rover keys and consider the significance of what was being played out through the script. And once he did he brought a darkness and anger to the role that I don’t think Will Smith could have (originally this role was created for him). Plus Big Willy Style would have sneaked in at least one “Aww hell naw!!” in the movie for no reason at all. So Foxx is sure to get an Oscar nomination for this role. Leo Dicaprio is nothing short of amazing as Calvin Candie, and I never say that about Leo. There is one intense scene between him and Foxx where he is testing out the authenticity of his and Waltz’s story. It leads to one of the most gruesome death scenes you will see in a movie. It’s hard to see Leo (who also reportedly had a hard time playing this role) as evil but he is able to properly do so in a manner where he rarely scowls or frowns on screen. He instead is smiling and generally happy for the most part which makes his character all the more creepy. He too warrants a nomination for Best Supporting actor. 

But in the end, the only actor who I believe will actually win one is Samuel Jackson. He plays the role of Stephen, Candie’s House N word. If you don’t know the role of this person, they were basically the slave who forgot that they were black and treated their owner as if they were basically their father. And they treated the other slaves almost as poorly as the slave owners did. He destroys this role with both his typical Sam Jackson humor and his Jewels from Pulp Fiction menacing behavior. 

This movie definitely lives up to the hype and I rate it as kind of TIGHT!  The combination of tarantino’s writing and the actors he cast to bring those words to life makes this one of his most memorable movies. It’s really funny, intense, depressing, and exhilarating all at the same time. In his past movies, he would force the N word in unnecessarily but every time he uses it here (around 500, not joking) it’s fitting as it sets the tone and the mood of the time period they lived in. Definitely go see it, if for nothing else to see white people nervously laugh as they look around for black people who may be sitting around them.