Movie Review- Django- Unchained

I rented this movie  off of PPV last night not realizing that it was a Quentin Tarantino movie.

I don't usually care for his movies. As far as I am concerned, if you have seen one of his movies you have seen them all.  It is like he had a great idea once and has based his entire film making career on that one idea.

But I spent the money so I figured I may as well go ahead and watch it.

The basic plot is that a bounty hunter (Christopher Waltz) is searching for a particular group of "overseers" who have a bounty on their head for murder.  He seeks out Django (played my Jamie Foxx) buys him, and uses him and his personal knowledge of said overseers to hunt them down and kill them. In exchange, Django is given his freedom and some cash. The relationship grows into friendship and they become business partners. Thus begins a winter of serious cash collecting on all different bounties.

The underlying plot, of course is that Django needs to go find his wife (Kerry Washington) who has been sold to a different plantation. So the two set off with a plan to obtain possession of his wife.

First off I want to say that Jamie Foxx was fabulous in this movie, in fact as far as the acting goes, everyone was.

 Leonardo Dicaprio played the plantation owner who currently owned Django's wife, and he seriously nailed the part.

Samuel L Jackson played the "head house negro" and if I had not known his voice, I never would have known it was him.  The banter between him and Leonardo, was priceless!

Of course no western is complete with out the ponies, so here is a gratuitous pony shot, and Jamie didn't even look totally uncomfortable on a horse.

About half way through the movie I found myself thinking, "Wow this is not your typical QT movie!"  I was enjoying it.  Not terribly violent, a little bit of  humor, and I was pretty wrapped up in the plot.

Then everything fell apart and it went back to classic Tarantino, and the second half of the movie was.....well mind numbing.  You can only assault the human psyche so much with negativity before it shuts down.  My brain did just that.  I'm not sure how long the movie really lasted, but if I had to guess I'd say that the second half alone was about 12 days long.

Here's the thing, I understand that some times stories are violent. I can accept that truth without having to see every single gory detail of the violence. I am perfectly happy to imagine it in my own mind (or not) with out having to see how someone else imagined it would look.

So with out spoiling it too much for those who have yet to see it, here is my recap of the movie itself. (particularly the second half)

"F- you...no F-you...N-word...N-word...N-word...Argh...pow pow pow...Argh, you shot me...F-you......M'F'r...pow pow pow...buckets of blood....big explosion....N- word...F-You...N-Word...N-Word...F-you...pow pow pow....more blood....pow pow pow...N-word...F-you...M'Fr....more blood....big explosion...."hero" rides off into moonlight with the girl, but not before doing some trick moves on his fancy new reining pony....the end.

So, I went to bed totally disappointed.  Tarantino had the chance to make a great movie and he blew it.  It was a great story, the perfect actors and he turned it into a B- movie with his typical "the floor was littered with dead bodies" over the top graphic violence. The fact that really great actors are lining up to star in one of his movies just blows me away!

If you are a Tarantino fan, then you will love this movie.  If you are a fan of westerns, then you will like the 1st half of this movie.  If you like horses you will like the very last scene of the movie, but nothing else.  Regardless, bring a pillow and get comfy, because it is a long one.