Premiering this week in Egypt is Quentin Tarantino's newest, Django Unchained, a pulpy, bullet-riddled and bloody western flic about a freed-slave Sigrid (Jamie Foxx) and his German companion Dr. Shultz (Christopher Waltz) who set out to take revenge on slavery in the American South. The year is 1858, a few years before the start of the American Civil War, and Shultz, a dentist-come-bounty hunter, frees the captive Django in order to execute a dead or alive bounty on a group of bandits posing as overseers on a slave plantation. The cautious Django follows, proves his worth as a gunman to Shultz, and the two partner up in a very myth-like quest to save Django's wife, Brunehilde, held at the ‘infamous' Candie's (DiCaprio) Candieland slave plantation in Mississippi. Django Unchained opens with a bang, red-painted opening credits slash across the screen and the thrilling “Django" theme plays. Instantly, we're reminded of Sergio Leone's gritty Spaghetti Westerns (The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, etc.) of the 1960's and 70's, except with Tarantino's touch of extra soul and funk. If the attention and excitement of an audience in captured in the first few seconds of a movie, then Tarantino follows this theory to the nail; Django Unchained is without question the most thrilling film in the theatres this year and Tarantino's best work since Pulp Fiction. To move beyond exaltations and get to details, Django Unchained is a movie successful on multiple levels, both as a triumph of raw 35mm film, a piece of thrilling, artful-violent entertainment, and revenge story against slavery. Film is a joy to watch in Django Unchained. Film absorbs the violent blasts of firing guns battles and projects the sun-bleached grit of the American South through overexposed panoramas. Tarantino's flic is one part Western, one-part strange ‘Kung-Fu' flic—a combination of long, deliberate shots with quick, acid-tripping fight scenes. Tarantino overlays this mix-match genre film with a soundtrack that is a mix of 60's soul, Spaghetti Western hymns, and contemporary rap. Quentin Tarantino is known as a director who works exclusively with 35mm, and as a cinematographer he pushes the medium to its limits. While Django recalls running away from his plantation with his wife or the subsequent torture that followed after their capture, Tarantino captures the brutality of the sequences through nearly blinding, Instagram-like cinematography. Waltz gives a performance as Dr. Schultz, antihero the dentist/bounty hunter that is thoroughly enjoyable to watch. In the opening scene as Django and Waltz first meet, those that have seen Tarantino and Waltz's previous collaboration will be instantly reminded of Waltz's previous character, the menacingly eloquent “Jew Hunter," except this time with an opposite twist of altruism and extra comedy. In fact, Shultz provides much of the film's over-the-top humor as he confuses slave owners and other bad guys with witty ‘parley.' Foxx's stone-eyed and depthful performance as Django is the perfect match to Dr. Schultz. Through Django's eyes, we see his character's brutalized and scarred memories of slavery and why Django absolutely must take revenge on the institution of slavery. We see Django move from a victim to an instrument of vengeance, and with each bullet he shoots into a slaver or plantation overseer, we root for him. By the end of the film, Django becomes a little bit like Schultz, eloquently confusing uneducated and dull-witted slavers. I rarely get to see so much range in the performance in a character, and each turn or step that Django's character takes is a powerful experience. As Tarantino explains in his recent interview with The Daily Mail, “revenge should be satisfying." Django Unchained is an alternative take at history, a thrilling experience that allows the audience to personally and satisfying take their revenge on one of the worst happenings in human history as they watch Django mythically shoot-up, destroy, and take down slavers in the American South. This flick is a violent one, but this on-screen violence is a tool make revenge satisfying, to destroy and obliterate evil. Whether you're a film buff, Tarantino's work, or anyone else, Django Unchained is a movie that will thrill you and leave you chatting about it for days after. Bikyanews.com
