SAMANTHA OLAFIMIHAN
SC Staff Writer
Quentin Tarantino is the father of gory filmmaking outside the horror genre. Tarantino’s most famous movies are “Pulp Fiction” (Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, And Bruce Willis), and “Kill Bill Vol.1” (starring Uma Thurman).
His newest film “Django Unchained,” stars actor/singer Jamie Foxx, who is accompanied by an all-star cast featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Samuel L. Jackson, Christoph Waltz and Kerry Washington. Tarantino may have a sick sense of humor or amusement in his films, but he has a keen eye for the acting talent of his movies.
In this film Tarantino tells the story of an African American slave, Django (Jamie Foxx), who has a grudge against his previous owners, the Bacall Brothers, because they separated Django from his wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), a house slave.
The brothers whipped her, causing major scarring to her back and branded her face with an “R” for runaway. While Django and other slaves are moved in the middle of the night, a man Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), approaches the group looking for Django to help him identify the Bacall Brothers for a bounty.
Django is freed by Dr. Schultz, and the two become a gun-slinging, fur-wearing, stylish duo making their way across the South collecting bounties, while searching for the location of Broomhilda.
Although the movie is long and one could say, “drawn out,” Tarantino successfully (and thankfully) draws the viewer back in with intense scenes. One such scene was when the duo meets the owner of Candyland, the infamous plantation run by the eccentric, cruel man Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) who specializes in “Mandingo fighting” where male slaves fight each other to the death in one of his parlors.
Samuel L. Jackson puts on a great act as Stephen, the overseeing slave, who has raised Candie and Candie’s father before him, and who suffers from a big case of self-hate and hate for the other slaves.
The movie lags again and then picks up when Django’s partner Dr. Schultz finds his conscience here as he witnesses the atrocities that Candie commits for his amusement.
This spurs on an ending that leaves many reeling from the amount bloodshed. In a rating of four stars, this movie gets a 3.5, for the length of time (of the film) and long-drawn out scenes which could otherwise have been cut out.
Email Samantha at:
so4950@live.esu.edu
