Django Unchained

Django Unchained (2012) is a western in which Tarantino turns the genre against its own rules: the hero is an escaped slave and the revenge is taken on slavery itself. Two years before the Civil War. Django is being marched in chains when a German bounty hunter named Dr King Schultz buys and frees him. Schultz wants one thing in return: Django can identify three men he is looking for. They become partners, and Django's real purpose surfaces, his wife Broomhilda has been sold onto a plantation. The best written character is not the villain but the man beside him. Stephen, played by Samuel L. Jackson, is the household's most loyal slave and the person actually holding the order together. It is Tarantino's most uncomfortable invention. During filming DiCaprio struck a real glass and cut his hand and kept going; that take is in the film and the blood is his. The argument on release was substantial. Treating slavery as material for a genre film and the volume of slurs were both criticised; Spike Lee announced he would not watch it. Christoph Waltz won Supporting Actor and Tarantino won Original Screenplay. It runs 165 minutes. Good for: westerns, Tarantino, and revenge narratives. Less good for: the violence is extremely graphic, racial slurs are used continuously, and the slavery scenes are genuinely hard.