Django Unchained

Django Unchained 
Different.  Quentin Tarantino's latest work is certainly no ordinary cinematic experience.  It is loud, vibrant, extreme, and brilliant.  When it comes to making a movie in today's world, it is often brave and wonderful to be called different.  A film about a freed slave trying to find his wife is a story that could be told in many ways, but Tarantino found a way that has never been done before.  It is more than a gun-slinging shootout, a love story, or a journey of a pre-Civil War slave, and that is precisely why it is worth watching.  

Django Unchained opens with Django (Jamie Foxx), and several other actors playing slaves, chained and walking through the desert.  Immediately the audience is thrust into a cinematic event that one does not expect and cannot fully prepare for: a deep look into Tarantino's extremely realistic portrayal of slavery in the south, just two years before the Civil War began.     

Out of nowhere, the film takes a turn in a wry direction with the entrance of German dentist-turned-bounty hunter, Dr. King Schultz, who purchases Django and quickly puts him to work.  Django and Schultz become bounty hunting partners on the conditions that Django carries out a number of bounty huntings and that Schultz helps to find the nearly-freed slave's wife.  The two characters make for an interesting partnership and friendship, each teaching and helping the other in ways that were once unacceptable for southern standards.

As the film progresses, Django and Schultz must find Django's wife Broomhilda (played by Kerry Washington).  This is where things get brutal, twisted, and sticky, and where plantation owner, Calvin Candie (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) makes his entrance.  Mr. Candie owns Candyland, the plantation where Broomhilda is thought to live and work in slavery.  At Candyland a variety of awful events ensue, including "Mandingo fighting."  Ironically, while something like cock fights among slaves are taking place, there is one slave who essentially runs all of Candyland, Stephen (played by Samuel L. Jackson).  Beyond here, it is a story that is the silver screen's to tell.   

In addition, each of the actors in this movie do an amazing job in their roles, and even Tarantino makes a great appearance.  The emotions that are conveyed within the relationships of this film are amazing to watch.

Finally, the cinematography, soundtrack, and setting were all laced together perfectly, creating a film that is worth a watch.



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