Django – good, not great

Django Unchained
DIRECTED BY: Quentin Tarantino
STARRING: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L Jackson
CERT: 18
Despite the fact that he lost the plot somewhere around Kill Bill – deciding finally to throw out any pretence that all he was ever doing was indulging himself and his extreme fanboy fantasies – a new Quentin Tarantino movie is still an event. Because you know that, somewhere in all of the juvenile nastiness, there are going to be moments of genius, things that mark the man out as a great director, despite his own worst efforts. Django Unchained is no different.

It kicks off in 1850s Texas, deep in the woods, where an itinerant German dentist named Dr King Schultz (Waltz) crosses paths with a group of shackled slaves. Turns out it’s no accident that the good doctor’s wagon happens to turn up when it does. He has a certain interest in one of the slaves, a fellow by the name of Django (Foxx) and negotiates in his own fashion to buy him for himself.

It also emerges that Dr Schultz doesn’t have much time to be practicing dentistry anymore, now that he’s become a professional bounty hunter. He’s not one for owning slaves either and grants immediate freedom to his new purchase, on the agreement that Django will lead him to the Brittle brothers, with whom the doctor has an appointment for a touch of revenge. So the boys become business partners and enjoy immense success.

The focus of their efforts shifts when Django tells of his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and they head to Mississippi to find her. They discover she’s being held at a plantation owned by the perfectly despicable Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). The lads waste no time in inviting themselves to the mansion under the pretence that Schultz wants to buy Broomhilda for himself, on account of how she speaks German and he’s mad for the bit of conversation in his native tongue.

Which goes over fine with everyone, except for Candie’s favoured personal slave Stephen (Jackson), who sees through the bluff immediately. Stephen is probably the most intriguing character in the film, the classic Uncle Tom for whom personal interest means more than allegiance to his own oppressed race.

It’s a brave move by Tarantino – and by Jackson – to go down that road and indeed, the director doesn’t shy away from tackling the worst elements of the Southern slave trade. As always, however, he has a tendency to sabotage the good work with excess, undermining anything worthwhile by drawing attention to himself and his penchant for overkill.

In one such case, Candie orders up some after-dinner entertainment, where two slaves fight each other to the death, with a hammer playing a prominent role. It’s violence purely for the sake of discomfort and, in the midst of the screaming, you can almost hear Tarantino squealing with childish delight.

On the other hand, he can pull off a very funny scene where a gathering of Ku Klux Klan members bicker over their hoods, whining that they can’t see through the eyeholes. It’s the kind of darkly comic stuff he can do in his sleep, the material that would be infinitely more effective overall if only he could rein in his wilder impulses.

He still has a fine talent with actors too and brings out the best in this bunch. Christoph Waltz stands out in the crowd, as he did as the gleefully sadistic Nazi in Inglorious Basterds. Jamie Foxx makes the most of a rare, strong role, Leonardo DiCaprio excels as a genuinely hateful villain and Samuel L Jackson must be beside himself simply to be playing any kind of character that doesn’t require him merely to snarl and shout. There’s a cameo, too, by Jonah Hill, probably because it is contractualy required that he turn up in every movie currently being made.

As he tends to do, Tarantino hands a role to a forgotten star and this time around it’s 80s TV icon Don Johnson. As he also tends to do, he takes a role for himself simply for the attention, putting on a woeful Australian accent because, well, he probably thinks it’s hilarious.

There are enough genuine laughs without that and, as you’d expect, there are times when the film is visually breathtaking. There’s no doubting Tarantino’s talent, that he really is a master of the art of cinema.

If he could just grow up a little bit as a director, his films could be truly outstanding again. As it is, Django Unchained is a good film, not a particularly great one. It’s also about an hour too long.