Django Unchained

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

(R)

***

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Does the latest Quentin Tarantino revenge fantasy cross the line? Well, “it wouldn’t be Tarantino otherwise,” said Peter Travers in Rolling Stone. There’s plenty that might offend and a lot of “talk, talk, talk” in Django Unchained, but it’s also “a jolt of pure cinema, dazzling, disreputable, and thrillingly alive.” Jamie Foxx and Christoph Waltz co-star as a slave named Django and the dentist turned bounty hunter who frees him. As they begin hunting down Django’s cruel former overseers, they “make an irresistible buddy team,” said Owen Gleiberman in Entertainment Weekly. Still, the movie “doesn’t spike to full Tarantino fever” until the duo match wits with Leonardo DiCaprio, “having a blast” as the flamboyantly racist slaveholder who owns Django’s wife. Even so, the film “comes across as a rough cut” despite its many “momentary pleasures,” said Alison Willmore in Movieline.com. Loaded with scenes that go on too long and others that “feel entirely unnecessary,” it becomes “an unfortunate example of a director disappearing so far into his own vision that he’s lost interest in taking a step back and looking at it in its entirety.”