In the dead of night, surly cowboys set out atop their strapping horses with one objective - to slaughter their enemies as painfully and crudely as possible. However, hilarity ensures when the vengeful men wear ridiculous masks, hand-cut by their wives, and simply can't see their targets. And so, like a party of bumbling fools, they wreak havoc with their guns. In this comically evil scene in Django Unchained, Quentin Tarantino proves that he can inject humour in just about any situation - even cold-blooded murder.
Based on the genre of "spaghetti westerns" or Italian westerns which gripped Hollywood in the 1960s, the film is the story of Django, a fugitive-slave (Jamie Foxx) in Texas who forms an unlikely bond with an itinerant German, Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz). Mind you, the film begins two years before the American Civil War when the idea of an African-American parading in fancy clothes, smoking cigars or even riding a horse alongside a white man was forbidden.
Though tedious at over two hours and forty minutes, Django makes you squirm in your seat as it viciously reveals the bigoted ideas of slavery. Foxx delivers a restrained performance as he transforms from a timid slave relishing his first sip of beer to a cheeky cowboy who swaggers across a white man's plantation and insults him. Waltz, who also won an Oscar for his smooth portrayal of a bounty hunter ("like slavery, it's a flesh-for-cash business,") masquerading as a dentist in Django, had already impressed us as the silver-tongued S S Colonel Hans Landa in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). But here, he is suave, almost gentlemanly, adding the much-needed humour to this otherwise angry film. When a few slave traders point a gun at him, he questions, "My dear man, did you simply get carried away with your dramatic gesture, or are you pointing at me with lethal intention?" In another terrific scene, Schultz sits patiently atop a hill as Django prepares to kill his first bounty. Almost ruthlessly, Schultz hands him a bill along with some coldblooded advice: "Always keep the handbill of your first bounty, it brings good luck."
At the heart of Tarantino's violent saga is a fairy tale. Except the princess here is a slave (the forgettable Kerry Washington), who must be rescued by Django from a ruthless white aristocrat. While he enters the plot much later, it is Leonardo Dicaprio's seductive portrayal of Calvin Candie, a charming Mississipi aristocrat, which mesmerises and revolts us with unabashed crudeness. Along with his "family slave" Steven (a pitch-perfect, almost unrecognisable Samuel L Jackson), Candie presents the most cruel picture of slavery as he thoroughly revels in the "sport" of Mandingo fighting; he cheers and eggs on his hefty slave to kill another. Tarantino celebrates blood - eyes are gouged, limbs are torn, muscular men are whipped into submission. If you have a weak stomach, avoid this film.
Watch the film for Tarantino's bold take on slavery even as he subverts preconceived notions of submission. As a patronising white man asks Django - now a free man - if he can even spell his name, an effortlessly cool Foxx answers, "D J A N G O. The D is silent."
