dvd of the week
Tarentino’s homage to spaghetti westerns and blaxploitation films of the 1970s is his funniest movie by far and as nearly as fun to watch as Kill Bill Vol. 1. It’s also the movie that probably sets some sort of record for the use of the n-word, and it’s disconcerting, to say the least.
Tarentino loves that word for some reason, and every character in the film utters it in almost every sentence. (Except, very interestingly, for the character Tarentino briefly plays, who uses “blackie” instead.)
Granted, it takes place a decade before the Civil War, and it’s about a slave named Django (Jamie Foxx) who is freed by an intellectual German bounty hunter named Dr. King Schultz (Oscar winner Christoph Waltz). They team up first to kill bounties and then to save Django’s wife Hildie (Kerry Washington) from a most evil plantation owner (Leonardo DiCaprio).
As with most Tarentino films, Django Unchained is outrageously and specifically violent, full of depictions of pain and agony, and it’s not clear what the message is. But because it’s a Tarentino film, that violence, as with the comedy and the standard dramatic scenes, is meticulously, artfully staged and photographed.
