'DJANGO' JANGLES MY NERVES

I finally managed to struggle through "Django Unchained," the most recent movie by Quentin Tarantino, who seems to be an overgrown 12-year-old with an exaggerated sense of his own self-importance.

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