Django Unchained (2012)

Director: Quentin Tarantino
Stars: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio
Runtime: 165 minutes

Synopsis: With the help of a German bounty hunter, a freed slave sets out to rescue his wife from a brutal plantation owner in Mississippi.

Verdict: So I was looking for something to watch on Netflix when Quentin Tarantino’s “Django Unchained” popped up on my feed. Realizing that I hadn’t revisited it since I first watched it in theaters 9 years ago (what!), I didn’t think twice before pressing the play button.

Most of you are familiar with its plot, which sees a German bounty-hunter team up with a freed slave during the not-so-glorious 1850s in the hopes of rescuing the latter’s wife from the hands of the terrible Monsieur Candie. It’s an incredibly entertaining watch, despite its grim premise, that pays homage to the spaghetti westerns of yore without sacrificing Tarantino’s trademark style. In other words, it truly does feel like its own thing, delivering some of the most quotable lines of the 2010s and gifting us with some instantly iconic characters and scenes.

It’s a movie that was bound to become a landmark in pop culture, but also one that doesn’t entirely benefit from multiple rewatches. In fact, even a decade after I last saw it, I never felt like I was getting anything new out of it. Everything I liked about it was still there and so were the small moments of disconnect.

It doesn’t surprise me that this movie is talked about in parts rather than as a whole. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a very solid project that only Tarantino could’ve pulled off, but it ultimately feels more like a collection of iconic moments that work better separately than as a whole.

FINAL GRADE: 7/10