Cast:
Jamie Foxx (Django Freeman), Christoph Waltz (Dr. King Schultz), Leonardo DiCaprio ("Monsieur" Calvin J. Candie), Kerry Washington (Broomhilda "Hildi" von Shaft), Samuel L. Jackson (Stephen Warren), Walton Goggins (Billy Crash), Dennis Christopher (Leonide "Leo" Moguy), James Remar (Butch Pooch / Ace Speck), David Steen (Mr. Stonecipher), Dana Gourrier (Cora), Nichole Galicia (Sheba), Laura Cayouette (Lara Lee Candie-Fitzwilly), Ato Essandoh (D'Artagnan), Sammi Rotibi (Rodney), Clay Donahue Fontenot (Luigi), Escalante Lundy (Big Fred), Miriam F. Glover (Betina), Don Johnson (Spencer "Big Daddy" Bennett), and Franco Nero (Amerigo Vessepi) Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino (#638 - Kill Bill: Volume 1, #639 - Kill Bill: Volume 2, #1180 - Reservoir Dogs, #1218 - Pulp Fiction, #1251 - Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, #1307 - Jackie Brown, #1551 - Inglourious Basterds)
Review:
"I want to explore something that really hasn't been done. I want to do movies that deal with America's horrible past with slavery and stuff but do them like spaghetti westerns, not like big issue movies. I want to do them like they're genre films, but they deal with everything that America has never dealt with because it's ashamed of it, and other countries don't really deal with because they don't feel they have the right to."
It should only figure that Quentin Tarantino had his eye on Sergio Corbucci. Tarantino was actually writing a book about the director when he found a way to tell a story that he wanted to make in a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns, one where he found inspiration in what he saw as Corbucci's "this evil Wild West, a horrible Wild West" in his feature. Specifically, Tarantino is doing a tribute to Corbucci's Django (1966), a film that the director co-wrote that featured Franco Nero as star involving a drifter and a companion mixed into a deadly feud between Confederates and Mexican revolutionaries. The film was made to capitalize on the success of Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964), which in turn was a "loose" remake of Akira Kurosawa's Yojimbo (1961). If you remember, Inglorious Basterds (2009) was made by Tarantino as his desire to make a Spaghetti Western but as a World War II film, and we all know how that went: good for some, okay for others. Here, he has made a film that he calls a "Southern" that is part of his long line of tributes to genres of film such as revenge films, road-rage movies, and martial arts films.
Honestly, I enjoyed the film far more than I thought I would, with my hopes being that it would be a slightly more interesting of sprawling alternate history than the weird jumble that came from his last feature. Of course, Waltz and Tarantino won Academy Awards for their work on the film (both winning their second award for acting and writing, respectively), so who knows what kind of expectations were to be had here from Tarantino's seventh feature. I felt it was a consistent pulp experience that shows its respect for the filmmakers of the past in terms of classic Western types without becoming just a carbon copy of the things that were. It packs a message about slavery and racism in a revenge movie that conveys a sense of scope and scale worth all of the attention it has received in the ten years that have passed since its release. It is dignified mayhem seemingly split into two segments: a movie about the repertoire of its two main stars and a movie about revenge through the eyes of Foxx. History is taken to the woodshed in a glorious manner, with Tarantino saying that he wanted to show two types of violence: the brutal reality of slave life and the violence of retribution, since he believes the genre of the Western reflects the time it was made in more than any other genre to go along with reflecting the morals and feelings of its audience. The Western may not be the most prevalent genre of the past few decades, but they sure do pull an interesting punch when a director is interested in generating fresh voices of the West. It is funny when you think about the fact that DiCaprio and Jackson don't show up until the first hour has passed in a 165-minute movie. And yet, the pair of Foxx and Waltz are ideal to hold everything together, making a great pairing in both chemistry and their distinct approach to the art of hired guns. Foxx is confident and capable to the task at hand, and it is interesting to see that he was not the first choice approached, since Tarantino wrote it with Will Smith in mind, but he rejected it (he wanted to make a love story, not one about vengeance, go figure). Foxx knows what he wants to do and say as a knight of vengeance that is never consumed in self-parody. Oh, the film does have little moments of humor between the two, particularly since Waltz plays dignity to an amoral(ish) killer, which he plays magnificently: they are fun together without making one think the whole film is just them and nothing else. DiCaprio is magnificent in clear-cut villainy in his time on screen that makes him suitably intense when you see him on screen. Jackson is the ideal foil in as the off-center moral compass with resourceful timing and the expressive nature you expect from him that makes him an ideal actor that has collaborated with Tarantino countless times. The rest of the cast proves worthwhile in their own contribution to the terror of dignity in 1858, whether that involves Johnson and his huckster plantation act or the oozing menace in Goggins or the weary fear in Washington. The movie has a wonderful design and atmosphere to it, but I am sure you already know that.
Well, the movie is probably not for everyone, which you might say for a number of Tarantino movies depending on one's patience for violence or language, particularly with the use of one particular word. However, the movie sat fine with me, since Tarantino has a keen eye for what he wants to show in violence and atmosphere without going up his own nose in gratuitous excess (he actually trimmed the film's violence down a bit before release anyway, even though it already received an R rating from the MPAA), despite what critics may think of his interest in not just making a message movie with the usual trimmings. What's not to ponder in a movie that seems a reference of phrenology, people being used as human shields, fighting to a pulp, supremacists dwelling on how hard it is to see out of a hood, and action that might as well be called Shaft (1971) on a horse? You know what really is more of a problem than violence in movies? Folks who really believe that toning things down is better than confronting them head on. It is the grisly Western that represents its era in all of the ways it needs to be: honest without condescending, brutal but not exploitative, and entertaining but not inattentive to the matter at hand. It is the sensation you would hope from Tarantino in the art of making fresh kinetic cinema. He may not hit the mark on every moment of bold brutality, but he knows where he is going without wandering too far from wanting to entertain himself and others.
Overall, I give it 10 out of 10 stars.
Review #1256: Mr. & Mrs. Smith.