Django Unchained

I have been a little soured on Quentin Tarantino movies, not because they are bad, but because Quentin Tarantino always takes things to the extreme.  You could see that in Inglourious Basterds, where the movie would have some interesting dialogue followed by extreme violence, and then repeat the same pattern of interesting dialogue followed by extreme violence over and over.  But the movie that really soured me on Quentin Tarantino films was Kill Bill: Volume 1, with its over the top martial arts scenes, the movie makes no pretense of being remotely believable.  Apparently Quentin Tarantino doesn't care about believably, just so long as the movie is entertaining.  How does he make entertaining movies?   By taking things to ridiculous levels.  As long as you don't care about believability, his movies are a blast.  It is with this knowledge of how Quentin Tarantino movies work that I watched Django Unchained. 

 Django is a freed slave who joins Dr. King Schultz in the bounty hunter business.  Schultz has no qualms about killing anyone without mercy, and he tries to impart that attitude onto Django.  Together they scheme a plot to free Django's wife from a cruel plantation owner, Calvin J. Candie.  They go to the plantation owner on false pretenses, but naturally things get complicated.

Since it is a Quentin Tarantino film, it is a given that the movie is extremely violent and has an excessive amount of profanity for what would have likely been used in 1857.  One thing that bothered me is the excessive use of the N-word.  Someone estimated that the word is used 110 times in the movie.  It is the one thing that sticks out more than anything else.

Despite all the film's many excesses, it does manage to entertain.  Quentin Tarantino movies always do.

Rating:  B+