Indeed - Django With A Silent D Movie Review....

Indeed - Its Django With A Silent D Movie Review....

Not many movie directors in their respective lifetimes can boast of giving their audience more than one classic movie - and for me, Quinton Tarantino has done so twice before with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction and now with Django Unchained; moreover, there are movie critics who would even add more of Tarantino’s work to the magnum opus auteur categories, which then puts him in rarefied air. I had to be mindful that my sheer love for Quinton Tarantino’s latest movie, Django Unchained, was not borne out of bias because of the subject matter - a Black slave on a vengeful trek - and my being Black… but I knew that I was not being biased because of so many of my co-workers telling and urging me to see Django Unchained. The beauty of Tarantino is that he is not only a great director, but an excellent writer as well that does not let a smidgen of dialogue go to waste. It is why Mr. Tarantino can take an obscure actor and make him or her shine with his dialogue, and even more so when the thespians reciting Tarantino’s lines are great actors. Case in point… let us take a trip down cinematic history lane and gloriously recalled Samuel L. Jackson’s turn as the Book-of-Ezekiel's Bible quoting assassin in Pulp Fiction and the funny gripping scenes in Reservoir Dogs where the criminals are arguing over what Madonna era they loved best.

As for Django Unchained, the plot is rather simple: Django, Jamie Foxx, a freed slave, goes on a rescue mission for his beloved wife, Carrie Washington, who is still a slave on a Mississippi plantation owned by a notoriously, vicious slave owner played by the brilliant, smarmy Leonardo Dicaprio… it is a pity that Mr. Dicaprio has yet to win an Oscar due to the fact that he is one of those rare breed of actors that can play any role and he has. But make no mistake, this movie belongs to Christoph Waltz… who previously won an Oscar for another of Tarantino’s movie, Inglorious Bastards. In Django, Mr. Waltz is a bounty hunter who buys Django’s freedom, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because Django knows and can recognize what certain criminals on Waltz’s lucrative bounty list look like. And what ex-slave would not go on an emancipation journey to free his wife, kill slave owners, and moreover, free and reunite with his beloved wife. We can see the love Django has for his wife because every now and then he imagines his wife in various state of attire. Carrie Washington plays Django's wife and her tanned butterscotch skin and beautiful full lips that would make lollipops too happy (the latter barrowed from Purple Rain) would warrant constant fantasies by any husband... missing the comforts of his wife and highlighting the emotional and physical price placed on Blacks then due to the Peculiar Institution (slavery).

There are jarring, controversial scenes depicting the wickedness that was and is slavery; one such scene shows Django’s wife being branded like an animal, and there is another where Django allows a bloody, painful sacrifice (assenting to a slave to be eaten by rabid dogs at Dicaprio’s request) for the better selfish good of freeing his wife and securing the nectar of vengeance at a more opportune time - something akin to the Jews suffocating their crying babies so not to give away their positions when they were on the run from the Nazis or Winston Churchill bombing enclaves in England knowing that he had family members residing in said enclaves because the Prime Minister knew that not doing so would tip off Hitler on certain important secrets and war strategies. Django also shows again how Tarantino can play with dialogue and bring to the fore apt symbolisms and ironies. Take for instance where Django shoots downs a fleeing racist criminal and as the rabid racist criminal falls from his horse... we see his blood cascading the white cotton plants that were waiting to be harvest ... we see Tarantino's irony in the fact that Dicaprio character's library is full of books authored by Alexandre Dumas and the former raves about Dumas (Author of The-Three-Musketeers, etc) and yet he is unaware that his favorite author is Black.

I spoke of Tarantino’s penchant of making actors better with his dialogue: and such scenes occur in Django which involve Don Johnson of Miami Vice’s fame… playing a racist slave owner. Johnson chews up the role and typical of Tarantino… these scenes too are hilarious not-with-standing the subject matter and the setting. Take for instance where Johnson and Jonah Hill are arguing over why the hoods made by the Klan eyes area are not wide enough to see when donned to carry out their lynching or the scene where Johnson tells one of his slave girls to treat Django as a free man… prompting the girl to ask if free like a free Whiteman - it is funny to watch and hear Johnson struggle to explain the difference between a free slave and free Whiteman. I can go on and on about Django, but I will say that anyone who sees it will have more than a great time and lest I be remissed… props to Walton Goggins (who you can see in the awesome show, Justified), and Samuel L. Jackson, the latter who deserves an Oscar for portraying with such panache a house negro. If the Academy can reward Halle Berry for prostituting herself in that despicable Monster’s Ball… at least they can reward Jackson’s portrayal of the fawningly, hilarious house negro - incidentally, for those who are offended by Django Unchained like Spike Lee - look at certain parts of modern Africa which still practice slavery and it being Black on Black does not make it any less disgusting!