Even after seeing Quentin Tarantino’s latest movie I still have misgivings about it, but I cannot deny that it is something special.  Like most of Tarantino’s films it fudges genre conventions, contains glaring anachronisms (particularly involving music), has gorgeous dialogue, boasts an overwhelming sense of style and is, at times, ultra-violent.  I’ve never been a huge Tarantino fan because I think he borrows (steals) from other filmmakers way too often and often doesn’t have much of anything to say in his features.  However, I have to say that this is the best Tarantino film I have seen since Reservoir Dogs, despite its excessive length, its pervasive of the N-word and a few moments that were seriously distracting.

Two areas where Tarantino excels are dialogue and performance.  As a writer he has an ear for very specific, detailed, intricate dialogue that from other sources would seem pointlessly wordy.  Here, though, the characters of Dr. King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) and Calvin J. Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio) immaculately express themselves in scene after scene.  Django himself (Jamie Foxx) has little to say, but he uses his guns in place of mere words.  Foxx gives the least impressive performance of the leads, but that isn’t meant as an insult.  Christoph Waltz is phenomenal, Leonardo DiCaprio is just slightly less great and Samuel L. Jackson is fiendishly effective in a morally ambiguous role that makes everyone’s eyebrows raise.

At 165 minutes the film is very long, yet there are sections that certainly could have been fleshed out considerably.  Most of the sequences are vividly memorable, due to Robert Richardson’s exquisite cinematography, superlative performances, Tarantino’s direction and bold music choices.  It is not boring or dull, what with so many faces from the past popping in and out in small roles, dynamic dialogue and bloody, gory violence which punctuates Django’s journey to rescue his wife (Kerry Washington). Ultimately it is the violence (some of it way over the top) and the incessant use of the N-word that is so off-putting.  The film repels even as it fascinates.  There is also one comic scene involving KKK-types that people seem to love but which grinds the narrative to a halt.  I couldn’t wait for that one scene to be over and done.

Tarantino is a huge talent with a penchant for mixing and matching other filmmakers’ achievements into his own heady pastiche and serving it up to quality-starved movie goers as something genius.  I’ve resisted that notion for a long time (ever since Pulp Fiction, the most overrated film of the 1990s), but even I must admit that with Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained the man is hitting his stride.  I still don’t care for his anachronisms, historical gaffes (dynamite had not yet been invented at the time of this story), modern music choices, buckets of blood and casual racism, yet I cannot deny that even at its trashiest, Django Unchained is a striking, grandly entertaining movie.  ☆ ☆ ☆ 1/2.  8 January 2013.