Over a decade ago, Quentin Tarantino released the marvelous western entitled Django Unchained. The film revolves around an enslaved man named Django Freeman who is part of a chain-gang and is freed by a Dentist/Bounty Hunter named Schultz. Django enlists the help of his new Bounty Hunter friend to help rescue his wife from the malevolent Calvin J. Candie.
When the film opened, it received nearly universal acclaim and proved to be Tarantino’s highest grossing film to date. It did come under scrutiny for consistently using the “N” word so liberally, but, to be fair, that was expected from a movie about slavery.
So, the question is, does this film stand tall as the greatest Tarantino film in the director’s filmography? The answer is yes, of course.
Why? Let’s look over the evidence. Much of Tarantino’s filmography has been a clash of blood and violence and in some cases can be gratuitous. Many fans of the director’s work will claim that his greatest film is none other than Pulp Fiction. However, Tarantino goes full force with his masterpiece Django Unchained, and decides to take out the contemporary themes that his other movies have.
His 2012 film uses a simplistic narrative about a man trying to find his wife and earn both of their freedom. The violence in the film never seems forced and seems more justified in its usage and placement. It doesn’t spend too much time trying to fit into a category of western or civil rights film because it stands in a league of its own and it revels in the idea of being a thought-provoking and vulgar shoot-em-up movie that doesn’t take itself too seriously like other movies like it in the genre.
It works for getting people in seats that want a good-old-fashioned western and Tarantino writes and directs it with the subtlest of ease, constructing every frame and character so that it’s not over-complicated like Pulp Fiction.
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