Django Unchained

I made a deal with my wife this year, in regards to what movies we would see in the theater.  You see, we've attended a Best Picture marathon at our local movieplex for the past few years, cramming nine movies into two days, and we've always had a few that we were re-watching.  That's fine when you're at home, in the mood for a particular flick.  It's draining when you're in hour 8 of a marathon.  As such, we made a deal to not see anything in theaters that we thought would be nominated for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.  For my wife, that meant putting off a viewing of Argo.  For myself, it meant postponing the gory joy of Quentin Tarantino's latest film.  It was a mature choice, I suppose, but I was so happy to finally scratch my Django itch this past weekend.

The Django Unchained trailer really covers the basics.  Like so many other Tarantino movies --- Kill Bill, especially --- the premise is fairly simple.  A bounty hunter in pre-American Civil War times, Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), enlists a slave, Django (Jamie Foxx) to help him out on a bounty assignment.  As it turns out, Django is a natural when it comes to killing people.  What a happy coincidence!  Working with Schultz allows Django to earn his freedom, but his ultimate goal is to find his wife.  He doesn't know who owns her, but Schultz agrees to help his new friend find his lost love.  Of course, there are some twists and turns down that road, usually involving racist white people and gore, but that sums things up pretty nicely.

Okay, there are bad black guys, too.  It's a complex film.

It's a good thing that I feel silly summarizing the plot in detail, because I have a lot to say about everything else in Django Unchained.  While I have some concerns about Tarantino's writing and direction, the man has a knack for getting great work from his actors.  I honestly think this is my favorite performance by Jamie Foxx --- of course, if you don't count Ray or Collateral, there's not much competition.  He was understated at times, but was able to rise to whatever level of silliness or violence the script demanded.

Violence and a silly suit --- in the same scene!  Levels!

His character was a little light on depth, though.  That may be because this movie --- which is definitely about Django's journey --- was dominated by Christoph Waltz.  Do you remember those awkward, slightly philosophical monologues that Uma Thurman sometimes delivered in Kill Bill?  Waltz takes that same sort of material and makes it magical.  I don't know if it is his voice or his natural charm, but Waltz is the best thing to happen to Tarantino's movies since Sam Jackson.  I was also impressed by Leonardo DiCaprio's heel turn as the primary villain. 

He doesn't need the hammer here.  With that grin, even flowers would look threatening

I've always liked DiCaprio, but his role selection over the past few years has bored me.  Playing a character with no regard for human life was a nice change of pace, and he was convincingly nasty.  Samuel L. Jackson was also (unsurprisingly) good as DiCaprio's right-hand slave.  Jackson swims through his profanity-laced dialogue, but what makes his performance stand out are the moments that he spends one-on-one with other characters.  Look at his face:

That is not the look of a slave.  That is the look of an evil bastard who loves to manipulate, and that is why this was a standout role for Jackson.  Like most Tarantino movies, the cast is substantially large, but those four are the major players.  Kerry Washington was fine as Django's wife, but her role was reactionary, so it was hard to like much about her.  Don Johnson had a better part, as one of the many racist white people that needed killing, but it's not like he had to do much in his role.  Walton Goggins made a welcome appearance as a henchman.  Goggins is quickly becoming one of my favorite villains, thanks to his work in Justified, but his caveman-brow and so-laid-back-it's-sinister Southern drawl make him a scene-stealer regardless of his medium.  Here, he played tough very well (as expected) and gave a truly fantastic frightened howl (less expected).  I'm not exactly sure why James Remar had a dual role, since his characters were never revealed to be brothers, but it's nice to see him get back to his bad guy roots, instead of all this bland authority figure crap he's been putting out lately.  The rest of the cast was essentially a series of cameos.  The ones that paid off fairly well were Jonah Hill, M.C. Gainey, and Bruce Dern; none of them did anything special, but they played their familiar parts well enough.  The rest were surprisingly brief.  Amber Tamblyn looked out a window, Franco Nero was there to pass on the legend (he was the original Django), and Ato Essandoh died poorly.

And then there is the hillbilly family, which consisted of Tom Savini, Robert Carradine, Zoe Bell, and Ted "Jesus Christ Superstar" Neeley, among others.  I don't know if they had a line between them.  Of course, Quentin Tarantino had to cast himself in a small role.  While his Australian accent was horrible, his character's fate was hilarious, so I'm counting this as one of his better bit roles.

Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed Django Unchained, and it is definitely a Quentin Tarantino movie.  If you don't already like his fast-talking and (occasionally) brutally gory films, Django will not change your mind.  Similarly, if you're already on board with Tarantino, I can't imagine Django disappointing.  In terms of dialogue, there are more than enough actors here that are capable of delivering QT's lines well.  Pairing Waltz and Jackson in the same film --- even though they didn't interact much --- was a lot of fun to watch, because you can tell that their dialogue was written specifically for them.

"What can I say?  I'm his muse."

Tarantino always has a strong vision of what he wants from each scene, and that is true in Django Unchained.  The story was nothing special --- it's a Spaghetti Western with racism --- but the script and the performances made it extremely entertaining.

Since this is a Western and a Quentin Tarantino film, I should probably take a moment to address the level of gore and violence in Django Unchained.   Simply put, it is awesome and abundant. 

...and this is only a small taste of the exploding blood packs in this film

I love the fact that Tarantino is sticking to actual fake blood, instead of adding CGI blood in post-production.  QT is currently the leader in fake blood usage in modern films, and the ridiculous excess of it always makes me smile.  To put it another way: if you don't like gore, this is not the movie for you.

To put it another way, *slowly licks Leo's hand*

The gunfighting is done well, and there are plenty of shootout scenes --- particularly toward the end.  More important than the quantity is the quality.  These scenes are violent, and they occasionally have repercussions (although not really).  I also have to admit that Foxx and Waltz looked pretty damn cool most of the time, which is about 60% of any good Western.

This still alone is better than American Outlaws

There are three problems I have with Django Unchained.  The first is that the movie is too damn long.  Tarantino loves to hear himself talk, so I suppose it is no surprise that he can't seem to cut out much from his films.  That's not a huge problem, but this story could have been twenty or thirty minutes shorter and still been awesome.

He could have cut the scenes where they shopped for drapes, for example

My next issue was how well Tarantino built up a large cast of villains and then dispatched most of them with little more than an afterthought.  The most obvious example of this was the hillbilly family; the cast was noteworthy and Sam Jackson built them up like the damn bogeymen for slaves (which would seem to make them extra-extra-scary), but the payoff never came.  You can make the same argument about almost all of the slavers in this film, but that was the instance that bothered me the most.  The most irritating aspect of this film is convoluted plan to retrieve Django's wife.  The script went to great pains to justify this roundabout attack, but the direct approach ("Hello, can I buy your slave?") seems too reasonable to have been dismissed as something not worth trying.

Are any of those issues critical flaws?  Not for me, although the last one still bothers me, even days after watching it.  Django Unchained does so many things right that its missteps barely matter.  And I haven't even mentioned the amazing soundtrack!  Ennio Morricone.  Western.  'Nuff said.  I went into this with extremely high expectations, and I loved every minute of it.  The violence was ample, the dialogue was funny and clever, and the villains (especially Sam Jackson) had depth.  It's not perfect, but I find the imperfections pleasantly interesting. 

Here's the song from the opening credits, which also happens to have been the song from the original Franco Nero Django:

Law Abiding Citizen

I wish the tag line to this movie was "...or Is He?"  Obviously, a movie with the title Law Abiding Citizen and the tag line "The system must pay" makes my tag line a joke, but...this isn't a good movie.  It should take its smiles where it can.

This is a revenge flick, so somebody needs to die, right?  Gerard Butler's wife and daughter are murdered before his eyes; there are two men involved, one that is clearly unwilling to spill blood, and the other that likes to kill and is obviously in charge.  When both men are arrested, the Assistant District Attorney (Jamie Foxx) makes a deal with the bloodthirsty crook, in order to guarantee a conviction and get the timid crook a death sentence.  Butler doesn't like this, but it was Foxx's call to make, and he made it.  Ten years later, Gerard Butler starts killing everyone involved in the case, from the criminals to the judge to the DA's office.  The twist is that Butler allows himself to be arrested...and the killings not only continue, but increase.

Whoa!  What a twist!  How does Butler do it?  Well, you have to thank Kurt Wimmer, the screenwriter for this beauty as well as Ultraviolet and Equilibrium, because it does not make much logical sense.  Okay, the reason Butler is able to kill people, even when he's locked up in prison, is because he is a strategist.  No, really, that's why.  Because he can plan stuff.  Okay, fine.  Butler's a long-established military genius who...no, wait...when the movie opens, he's an inventor of gadgets.  Hmm...well, I guess this generation changes occupations more often than our parents did.  How do you get into that field, I wonder...is there an application?  Is there a check box for revenge-fueled inventors?  No matter.  The dude can plan stuff, and that stuff is death.

Now that would be pretty cool if it was how the movie played out.  If Butler was a Bobby Fisher-level chess genius who could see ten steps ahead, it would be pretty sweet to see all the mean stuff he would set up.  Instead, what we get here is a remote-controlled car outfitted with missiles and a lot of car bombs.  Heck, my creepy high school lab partner can do that.  I will admit that there is a totally awesome cell phone-related death, but that's definitely the only original kill. At first, there is an air of mystery to how Butler does all this, but the last fifth of the movie answers almost everything.  Understanding how Butler does it could be awesome, especially if it was treated as a moment of recognition where everything clicks for Jamie Foxx's character.  Instead, we get answers that aren't terribly original or interesting.

Where does this movie fail, aside from plot originality and violence?  In the area of nudity, for one.  When Butler is arrested (at a time and place he chose) he got naked.  There is no sex in this movie, so there was no need for me to see Butler butt, but a decision was made: the arrest must be pantsless.  You'd think that this would be remarked on by somebody, either the arresting SWAT team (yes, he was waiting at his front door, naked, for the SWAT team), the judge, the lawyers or somebody.  Apparently, I live a sheltered life.

The acting wasn't great, but it wasn't bad.  Butler was his normal self, which makes accepting him as a genius a little difficult, but not impossible.  Foxx plays a lawyer that isn't nice, but he is competent here.  The supporting actors are fine, I guess.  Colm Meaney, Bruce McGill, and Leslie Bibb have all had better roles in their careers, but their work here is nothing to be ashamed of. This doesn't do much to recommend the directorial talents of F. Gary Gray, but like his other films (The Italian Job, Friday), this films ends up resting on the charisma of its stars.

The biggest problem for me was the characters.  The problem is that the two major characters are unsympathetic.  Butler's character is driven by revenge.  He doesn't want to only kill those responsible for the death of his family, but those that failed to see his view of justice fulfilled.  Okay, that's not too bad.  He's a sympathetic villain (at least, as long as his victims were convicted criminals), making a political point, but he's still a villain.  Jamie Foxx is an ADA with his eyes set on a fabulous career; he made a questionable call when he accepted the killer's plea bargain, but he did it because he did not want to hurt his conviction record.  When Butler starts killing everyone, Foxx does not get any more sympathetic; he is largely an absentee dad and is generally a cocky SOB.  You want to side with Foxx, but he's stubborn and stupid throughout the film.  So, you might think that the viewer is supposed to side with Butler.  The obvious target for Butler, once he murders the killer and the accomplice, is Foxx; after all, he made the deal and told Butler to his face that it was going to happen, regardless of Butler's feelings.  But no, Butler car bombs half a dozen people in the District Attorney's office that had nothing to do with his case.  He killed his targets' chauffeurs and protection details.  That, by any definition, goes beyond the notion of justice and makes Butler at least as bad as the men that killed his family.  Foxx is not as morally reprehensible as Butler, but he does not learn a lesson or admit guilt, so his character is still a cocky SOB.

If this film was taking a stance on vigilante justice, I might be able to understand the shades of gray with the main characters.  It doesn't, though; any point it might be trying to make is nullified by the ending.  Foxx never apologizes for letting a criminal off easy and Butler never admits that killing lawyers and judges is sometimes bad.  The ending actually makes such complaints moot, since Foxx's actions are about as far from the right choice as I can imagine.  With neither character having a developmental arc to their character's feelings on the issue in question, there's no drama.  No drama, a lack of creativity and sub-par action make this a bad movie.