I have to admit, I was not looking forward to seeing this movie. Tarantino is very hit-or-miss for me and I don't find Inglourious Basterds to be the classic others have.I was really not expecting it to be as hilarious as it was. The bag-head scene itself reached near-Blazing Saddles levels of caricature lampooning. Now I see why this is on so many critics' "Best of the Year" lists.
Bounty hunter Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) buys the slave Django (Jamie Foxx) in order to help him track down a bounty. As a reward for his part, Django gets his freedom. He immediately confides his plans on finding and freeing his wife, Broomhilda (Kerry Washington). This touches the heart of the great German legend The Ring Cycle, and the good Dr. Schultz vows to help him. Together, they track auction manifests to find that Hilde has been sold to plantation owner Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio). Knowing that Candie would never part with Hilde if he knew she was important, the two men pretend to be interested in buying slaves for gladiator-style fighting. This gets them an invite to Candie's cruelly-run plantation but brings them under the gimlet eye of his slave, Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) who just knows that there's something fishy happening.
I don't want to spoil anything that happens in the movie, but I will say that Don Johnson is a hell of a good sport. I thought he was going to be the stand-out but he simply cannot compete with Samuel L. Jackson at full wattage. Holy shit. By turns hilarious and menacing, Jackson plays the role of a slave that has profited from his owners through three generations and is intensely loyal, gleefully informing on other slaves. It's a despicable character and almost more evil than the primary villain.
There is violence and gore aplenty, with bad guys practically geysering blood every time they're hit and an overabundance of a particular inflammatory word but it fits the world Tarantino has created here.
Also, the soundtrack is badass.
No comments:
Post a Comment