Django Unchained
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Leonardo DiCaprio, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson
****
Quentin Tarantino returns with this Spaghetti Western-style slavery epic, one that's as profane and violent as anything in the Pulp Fiction director's canon.
It's 1858, and Foxx is Django - "the 'D' is silent" he announces - a slave desperate to rescue his wife (Washington) from the malevolent plantation owner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio).
Borrowing liberally from the original Django (1966) and Mandingo (1975), Richard Fleischer's film about slaves taught to fight each other, this latest mash-up is typical Tarantino: overindulgent, darkly funny, shockingly bloody.
But with the superb Christoph Waltz, as an eccentric German bounty hunter who aids Django, revelling in Tarantino's loquacious script, it's an electric ride - one that, despite its 165 minutes, won't leave you saddle sore.