Here are my notes:
DJANGO UNCHAINED
Tedious. Hours of boredom punctuated by moments of light
entertainment. How did Q. Tarantino get to be such a big deal? His sense of
timing alone puts me off. His humor is juvenile and what he finds meaningful is
absurd.
In one sequence, Django is separated from his long-lost wife for months
or years and then decides to do a winter’s worth of bounty hunting before going
to rescue her. Meanwhile, she is probably being beaten and raped. He doesn’t seem
to care. Finally, he finds her. Then, unbelievably, he waits behind a door
while the good doctor Schultz rambles on and on, pointlessly. The first delay
is sort of forgivable, as we are only told about it. The second delay is maddening.
The ending does not honor the characters
or pay off what has been set up. (SPOILER ALERT) For example, the formerly
clever Dr. Schultz gets stupid (for the sake of the script) and shoots Calvin Candie (stupid name, both for
him and for Candyland) and then is shot by a minor character. Yet Schultz has
been the pivotal character, the linchpin for the whole plot. Boom, he is gone.
No grand finale here. And his action violates the character. An opportunity for
drama wasted.
Overall, this was a good idea for a movie—white bounty hunter rescues
black man from slavery—but this movie is slow, stupid, and juvenile, a long
slow form of torture.
One would hope that a "major" Hollywood writer/director could do better.
-- Roger
Copyright
© 2013, Roger R. Angle
