I want to throw Lawrence some linky-love for his review of Django Unchained. If I don’t, I’ll hear from him.
And, more to the point, he says a lot of what I wanted to say. My comments are more in the form of notes on his review than an actual review.
I disagree with Lawrence on this. Specifically, I found what I’ll refer to as “the third act” (people who have seen the movie should understand what I’m talking about) to be kind of draggy. I think that entire sequence could have been tightened up considerably; I was ready for the movie to be over long before it was over.
Dear Quentin Tarantino:
You’re a good director. Really. Please stop trying to act as well. Thank you.
I was glad to see Zoë Bell in the credits, though I honestly missed her in the movie itself. Maybe one of these days Tarantino will give her the role she deserves.
There is a scene where Django and Schultz have hunted down a wanted man; Django balks at shooting the man in front of his child until Schultz has him read the wanted poster. I thought this was a very clever scene, more clever than I actually expected from Tarantino, for two reasons:
- Django has trouble reading the wanted poster. Of course he does; he’s a slave, he probably wasn’t taught to read very well to begin with. There are a lot of hack directors who wouldn’t have thought of developing Django’s character in that way.
- That scene also sets up a key plot point much later in the movie, which I won’t spoil here.
Generally: yeah, I liked it, but I would have liked it a little more at 2:15 or possibly 2:30, not 2:45.
Edited to add: For some reason, Lawrence’s comments about this film self-selecting its audience, and comments I expect to get from certain other people, remind me of ham. Don’t know why.
, pages 141-143.
