In Quentin Tarantino's highly-anticipated, highly-explosive new film, Christoph Waltz plays Dr. King Schultz, a former German dentist in the Antebellum South now working as a bounty hunter. He frees slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in order to enlist his help in tracking down Django's notorious former owners. In exchange, Dr. Schultz agrees to help Django track down his wife. The search leads them to Mississippi -- specifically, to Candyland, owned by infamous plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Posing as businessmen looking to purchase one of Candie's Mandingo fighters (participants in a cruel, fight-to-the-death slave battle), they work their way into the plantation, where they identify Django's wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington) and muster up a plan to free her. However, Candie's master house slave and confidante, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) figures out the men's scheme, and alerts Candie -- and that's when all hell breaks loose. The film is quite violent (although nothing is explicit; no brains, guts, etc. and the blood is obviously fake), but there are some genuinely funny scenes -- the KKK "bag or no bag" sequence is particularly hilarious. The film is also chock-full of excellent performances all around. Waltz is fabulous, and is the frontrunner to take home his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar (in another Tarantino film), but he is really the main character, and being placed in the Supporting category almost seems like a cop-out (the Best Actor race, after all, is a lock). DiCaprio and Jackson give truly outstanding supporting performances that should definitely have been nominated. The film falls short of being an "A" film because of its absurd running time -- almost three hours when it could very well be at least an hour shorter. The long and dragged-out landscape, character close-up, and slow-motion shots played with music could definitely have been omitted, or at least cut. In any case, Django is fun, witty, and very well-acted and directed.
Should you see it: Yes
Grade: B+
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