IF it was just another western, it would’ve have been very entertaining evening out, but now that it’s a Tarantino flick, you’d hope there’d be a bit more to it than just a movie for the movie’s sake. Maybe Tarantino doesn’t have much left to say?
Let’s get all the bad things out of the way first. Not really a criticism, or anything much to do with the film itself or Tarantino, but despite being a decent actor, I never really liked Leonardo DiCaprio much. In Django Unchained, I don’t think he was the right choice for his role, he’s just not very credible. Annoying is closer to correct description. He doesn’t ruin the movie though, and I guess he has a large enough fan base to make it work for him and Django.
Christoph Waltz was amazing in Inglourious Basterds but here he just seems to have a very thin character who just uses the few things that he first became famous for. And it just becomes predictable, boring and annoying after a while in a fairly long movie like this.
Kerry Washington might have been good, but the role is rather brief. Samuel L. Jackson is good but he’s so over the top that again, it just gets annoying after a while. So most of the issues are probably due to Tarantino’s self-indulgent directing or writing. Even Jamie Foxx wasn’t his best usual self.
The story/plot/script isn’t anything special, any twists aren’t surprises in the least, not least because everything drags along fairly slowly. Tarantino likes to break the conventional structure of a movie sometimes, but here different sections appear a little bit disjointed, although change of scenery does reduce the boredom.
After all that complaining, I begin to think it’s waste of time, but in reality it was still entertaining. Cinematography was good, music was entertaining, and at best it had some witty one liners, good action, funny comedy.
