Django Unchained

When one thinks of a Western, they usually conjure up images of the American Southwest, with landscapes of grand canyons, gargantuan stone monuments or widespread desert.  However, Quentin Tarantino's Django Unchained is also a Western... that mostly takes place in the American Southeast.  Despite this change of scene, Django incorporates several Western tropes and conventions to their fullest potential.  Ultimately, Django is a great movie with inspired action sequences, humorous asides, surprisingly deep meditations and comments on race in America, and perfectly tuned characters who develop as the film goes on, especially Django.

Django starts off rather morbidly, as we find our hero Django (Jamie Foxx) chained up with his fellow slaves and being forced to walk along a trail by a couple of rather awful slave drivers.  After a couple of scenes involving the horrors of such a walk, the audience is introduced to Dr. King Shultz (Christopher Waltz), an ex-dentist and, unbeknownst to the audience, current bounty hunter.  Shultz interrogates Django and believes that he is the one who could be helpful for his next assignment, but is threatened by the barrel of  a shotgun when the drivers realize what Shultz's real profession is.  Shultz immediately shoots them both, killing one and severely crippling the other, and frees Django.
This scene is quite dark yet also quite fun, setting up the film's tone for the rest of the running time.

The film then goes on to its main story, as Django and Schultz team up to take a pair of Django's old slave-owners/nemesis's.  After killing them in style (Django's blue attire may go down as one of the strangest outfits in cinematic history), the two decided to find Django's wife and find a means of freeing her.  Cut to a hilarious piece of dark-comedy on the origin of a certain robe-wearing, white-supremacist group followed by training montage in the surprisingly beautiful Wyoming wilderness.  After these wonderful scenes, Schultz and Django set off to tackle their most difficult challange: freeing Broomhilda Von Shaft (Kerry Washington) from the clutches of a cold-hearted yet memorable villian - Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) - and his truly villainous house-negro, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson).

(Django meets Calvin Candie, who is the owner of his wife.)

Without giving too much away, Django is a bloody, explosive and hilarious exploration into the Western genre with a Southern setting.  Yet despite the setting Django is a Western through and through.  We are given a protagonist who is a great shot with an even greater sense of style.  There are stand-offs and shoot-outs, wanted criminals and outlaws, bounty-hunters and a damsel in distress.  The roles are almost all perfectly cast, with DiCaprio's surprisingly villainous exploits and Samuel L.'s incredibly formidable character being just two examples.  This  especially applies to the main characters, as Foxx and Waltz seem to both have an inherent understanding of who they are portraying, and simply do an excellent job.   The Tarantino-effect is in full control here, as well - not only is there gratuitous violence, but gratuitous violence that is enjoyable, well-executed and just plain fun.  While the film does have quite a long running time coming in at just under three hours, I would highly recommend this film for its explorations of humor, action, violence, race relations, trope subversions, plot, wonderfully crafted character and, ultimately, just being a bloody good time.  All in all, not just a great Tarantino movie, but perhaps one of the best of the decade thus far.