How do you suppose you make up for slavery? Would 40 acres and a mule really do it? A big pile of money? And what magical pot would it come from? It’s not like the country is divided neatly into partitions of “former slaves” and “former slave owners” and it’s not like there’s just a bag of extra stuff waiting to be given to wronged folks. But even if it were, how could you possibly compensate? And who? And why?
In my mind, it is important to get the details of slavery right, because it is as foul an institution as man has ever invented. There
is no proper way to atone or compensate. None. But that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be an effort and I think the best way you go about letting people know what slavery was and how you feel about it is summed up in movies like Django Unchained. –“movies like” don’t be silly, Jim, there is no movie quite like Django, the best time I had at a theater in 2012, hands down.
Jamie Foxx is Django, a Texan slave. The year is 1858; slavery will be abolished within seven years, but nobody knew it at the time. In 1858, you can still parade your chain gang of owned naked men across the desert in the dead of night. An eccentric bounty hunter/ dentist (say, misfit elf Herbie, wouldn’t you rather be a bounty hunter?), Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz), seeks Django, the only person capable of IDing three criminal brothers. The brothers are Texas plantation overseers fled to Tennessee. And from the moment Schultz springs Django, unchained, from the slave links and, consequently, urges the remainder to exact revenge on the slave driver while giving them the tools to do so, you knew this was a special and fairly unique film.
Before long, Django becomes partner to Schultz, getting his own horse and wardrobe in the process. Django takes to bounty 
hunting like a … slave takes to freedom. “Kill white people and get paid for it, what’s not to like?” There is something both surreal and cathartic about a former slave dressed as Little Lord Fauntleroy taking a lethal whip to an overseer. If you’ve ever been privy to the tales of American slavery, felt sick to your stomach about it, and have no problem with ugly, violent retribution – this is exactly the film for you. Personally, I saw Django Unchained in a crowd that was 90% black and had the time of my life.
It wouldn’t be a Quentin Tarantino film without a mixture of hilarity with the awful. When a hooded lynch mob appears to string up Django and Schultz, an in-fight among the mob ensues because the flour-sack masks restrict vision considerably . Why don’t murderous asshole bigots think these things through? The KKK wouldn’t exist to perfect the hooded mask for years, and so our lovable gang of would-be felons has to live with the consequences of grade-school textile manipulation skills. I almost lost it completely when the artist’s husband stormed out, offended by the harsh words. It was quite the: “Screw you guys. I’m taking my noose and 
going home” moment.
In search for his betrothed, the enslaved and forcibly removed Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), Django ends up at Candieland, a huge plantation where the penalty for encroaching upon the Peppermint Forest is death by pitbull. Here, the subtlety of house slave toadie Stephen (Samuel L. Jackson) being the sharpest twizzler in the Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) licorice castle will be lost on no one.
You could watch Django Unchained for performances alone. Jamie Foxx has a role that will be the envy of actors for generations to come and he nails it. Jackson and DiCaprio are both marvelous foils. Tell me you don’t look at either of these guys on screen and say, “that’s Samuel L. Jackson … that’s Leonardo DiCaprio.” Neither can escape his fame. And yet, in Django, you’ll be much more taken by the character than the man in both cases. I love that Waltz gets to play a good guy here after his fabulous and loathsome Nazi work in Inglourious Basterds. Hey, Germans aren’t all bad. I make no such comment about slaveholders.
As a slave, the greatest concession
Is you will always keep your profession
As will your children, in succession
Whether in bounty or recession
And for this I’ve a small confession
I love when the pattern breaks
Rated R, 165 Minutes
D: Quentin Tarantino
W: Quentin Tarantino
Genre: What’s the opposite of Blaxploitation?
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Descendants of slaves
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: RNC attendees
