“Typical Tarantino Overindulgence”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

 

Django Unchained was written and directed by Quentin Tarantino, and it is a terrific movie for the first two hours.

Django Unchained

Unfortunately, the movie is three hours long, and the last hour is full of Tarantino’s self-indulgence at its worst.

Some people would say that all of Tarantino’s movies are self-indulgent.

Jamie Foxx plays Django, he is a slave, and the time is 1858, or two years before the start of the Civil War, as a title so conveniently informs the audience, along with the fact that we are in Texas.

Django is in a group with four other slaves who are being marched on foot by two white men on horses when they are encountered by Dr. King Schultz, played by Christoph Waltz.

Dr. Schultz has been looking for the group, and he asks if any of the slaves is named Django.

When Django speaks up, Dr. Schultz says, “Then you’re exactly the one I am looking for.”

Dr. Schultz buys Django for $125, but the transaction is much more complicated than that.

You see, Dr. Schultz is German, he used to be a dentist, but now he is a bounty hunter, and he is looking for three men known as the Brittle brothers, but he doesn’t know what they look like, and somehow he knows that Django can identify them.

Logic in his storytelling is not one of Tarantino’s strong points, not that he cares.

So, Dr. Schultz tells Django that he will make him a free man if Django will help Dr. Schultz find the Brittle brothers and capture them dead or alive.

After a couple of encounters with the law that have surprise endings that are also humorous, Dr. Schultz and Django are in Tennessee on a plantation owned by Big Daddy, played by Don Johnson, which has another surprise ending.

In return for Django’s help as his partner, Dr. Schultz agrees to help Django find his wife, Broomhilda, whose name intrigues the German dentist.

So their travels now take them to Mississippi and a plantation owned by Calvin Candie, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, whose head slave is played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Here is where the movie falls apart with blood, gore, and excessive length and self-indulgence.

Django Unchained is typical Tarantino overindulgence, and as I said, you can walk out after two hours.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”