Southern Discomfort

Quentin Tarantino first came to my attention, I suspect like many, when I saw Pulp Fiction at some point in the 1990s. It was on TV, I caught it by accident (being a very culturally unaware teenager, I had little idea what I was sitting down to) and thought it was brilliant. Not long after, Reservoir Dogs was on, and that too struck me as a fine piece of film making. I didn't pick up on a lot of the references I might have done now, just let myself be entertained.

Subsequently, I've not found myself too taken with his output. Some friends and I rented Jackie Brown and were so bored, we stopped the video to instead watch National Lampoon's Loaded Weapon 1, only going back to our hire with some reluctance. Since then, I've maintained his career was a case of someone shooting their load on their early work, albeit in spectacular style in a manner the vast majority of us could never manage. Kill Bill was fine, though I have no wish to sit through them again, and Inglorious Basterds I have yet to see, mainly due to the presence of Brad Pitt.

No matter, Django Unchained seemed interesting enough to warrant attention. Also, I had a free ticket to the Cornerhouse cinema in Manchester that I won in a pub quiz - result.

First: this flick has gotten a lot of attention based on the constant use of a certain word beginning with "n". As some white dickhead brought up in Cumbria, I've little idea of the impacts of slavery, racism and the like from any personal background, so it's hard for me to gauge on the grand social impacts of this, as seems to be the focus of many reviews. What I can say is that it didn't get in the way. It doesn't take a huge leap of imagination to think that that was how people talked in the South of the USA in 1858.

Not that historical accuracy is the name of the game here. If you're bored, you can check out websites that list the numerous anachronisms to be found. Yet as always with young Quentin, everything is about the characters and their dialogue.

Of which we mainly focus on two: slave Django (Jamie Foxx) has recently been bought and is being marched across Texas. Whatever fate was in store is changed by Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), a German dentist-turned-Bounty Hunter who needs our hero to identify three marks. From there, the two go on to form  an effective partnership in collecting rewards placed on the heads of various neer-do-wells.

As a story goes, it's nothing that special and it seemed odd to me that the whole "revenge" angle in the posters and suchlike doesn't really exist for the vast majority of the movie. Indeed, it's more a "rescue" story as the two leads plot to find and free Django's wife, Broomhilda, who only seems to exist in the story as an atypical Damsel in Distress.

This being Tarantino, it all looks and sounds wonderful and Waltz is a top-level enough actor to carry off his character's love of drama in style. Without doubt, he's the best thing here, especially as Foxx is too much of a blank slate to really root for to any degree. Having not seen him in Basterds, I can understand the fuss about his acting chops and imagine I'll be seeing him doing a lot more English-language work in the near future.

On the other side of the good/bad guy divide , Leonardo di Caprio is great as the plantation owner with questionable theories on white supremacy. I've never really been a fan of the fella's work before, perhaps because I think he has an odd-shaped head, but he does the job well here, aided by Samuel L. Jackson as a fiercely loyal slave.

In all, a decent movie, entertaining if nothing else and fans of its creator will find lots of love. Personally, I just liked a few of the cameos. Seeing Tom Wopat (Luke Duke to my childhood self) appear as a Marshall was strangely one of the highlights of the whole show. Shame he didn't give out a "yee-haw".