Django Unchained (2012)

There's a moment in Django Unchained where Calvin Candie leans across a table, all charm and menace, and you genuinely forget you're watching one of the most beloved actors on the planet. You're not watching Leonardo DiCaprio. You're watching a monster who believes, with complete sincerity, that he is the most civilised man in the room. It's the best performance of DiCaprio's career, full stop. I'll die on that hill.

This is peak Tarantino. Not good Tarantino, not great Tarantino. Peak. I've got it locked in my all-time top ten and it's not shifting any time soon.

What Quentin Tarantino does here that so few filmmakers ever manage is make every single element of a film feel essential. The dialogue, the violence, the music, the performances, the pacing. There is no filler. None. You're watching nearly three hours of cinema and it never, not once, outstays its welcome. That is a genuinely rare thing.

Let's talk about that soundtrack for a minute, because it deserves its own paragraph. The Ennio Morricone pieces woven through this film are haunting and operatic in the best possible way. They give Django a mythic weight, like you're watching a legend being forged in real time. Tarantino has always had an extraordinary ear for music in film, but here it's something else entirely. Every needle drop earns its place.

And the violence. Yes, it's brutal. Yes, there are moments that are genuinely hard to watch. But it's meant to be. This is a film set against the backdrop of American slavery, and Tarantino made the decision not to sanitise that. The gore isn't gratuitous for the sake of it. It carries weight. It's supposed to make you uncomfortable, and it does, and that's the point.

Christoph Waltz as King Schultz is one of cinema's great characters. A bounty hunter who quotes the law, despises injustice, and somehow manages to be the most likeable man in any scene he's in. Waltz plays him with such warmth and precise comic timing that you'd follow him anywhere. The dynamic between Schultz and Jamie Foxx's Django is the beating heart of the film, and Foxx is brilliant in a role that could have easily been overshadowed by the fireworks going on around him. He holds the whole thing together with a quiet, burning intensity.

Now, I have to address the question I keep coming back to, the one that feels almost sacrilegious to even ask. Do I prefer this to Pulp Fiction (1994)? Honestly? I still don't know. I've gone back and forth more times than I can count. What I can say is that asking the question at all tells you everything about where Django Unchained sits. You don't compare films to Pulp Fiction unless they're operating at that level. And this one is.

For my money, it also shades Inglourious Basterds (2009), which I love dearly. Both films take history and drag it through Tarantino's singular imagination, but Django feels more complete to me, more emotionally satisfying. The revenge here hits harder because the stakes feel more personal, more earned.

There is zero weakness in this film. Not in the script, not in the cast, not in the direction. Every performance in the ensemble lands. Every scene does exactly what it needs to do. It's the kind of film that reminds you why you fell in love with going to the cinema in the first place, the kind where you sit back in your seat at the end and just think, yeah, that was something.

Five stars. Easily. One of the greatest films ever made.

Rating: ★★★★★  | Year: 2012  | Watched: 2025-04-02

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Quentin Tarantino: Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019) · Inglourious Basterds (2009) · Pulp Fiction (1994) · Kill Bill: Vol. 1 (2003)
More from the 2010s: Wonder (2017) · Beautiful Boy (2018) · The Witch (2015) · What We Do in the Shadows (2014)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)
More western: The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) · Rio Bravo (1959) · Ride Lonesome (1959) · The Great Train Robbery (1903)