Django Unchained Reviews

A close cousin of sorts to Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained sees great set pieces, flashes of brilliance and another great performance by Christoph Waltz undermined by indulgent tendencies.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

Tarantino wants Django to be a rousing yarn as well as a commentary, but the movie so revels in its carnage that his larger point is drowned in a sea of blood.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

Tarantino's made a great movie but an underwhelming film.

Full Review

What a pity Tarantino is so busy booking cameos from old spaghetti stars and tipping his Stetson to schlock that he never unchains his most promising brainwave.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

The players are in fine form. But the movie he's embroiled them all in is a hit-and-miss affair, at times an amusing reimagining of history, more often a blood-spattered bore.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

We're used to Tarantino's films being multi-layered with several plots going on at once, but Django Unchained is a little too simple and, dare I say, dull.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5

By the two-hour mark the fun had oozed out of the movie for me. It's long. Or feels it.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

Django may be unchained, but his movie could have used some tighter shackles.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

Django may be unchained, but his movie could have used some tighter shackles.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.5/4

Quentin Tarantino has made another movie. Or, rather, Quentin Tarantino has made the same movie again.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4

We're left with an overindulgent shadow of what could have been a much better film.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

[A] piece of have-it-all-ways hokum ...

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Different setting, same old Tarantino

Full Review

Tarantino almost saves his picture with his last act showdown but not quite. Getting there was a route too long, too clumsy, and just plain tedious.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5

Unfortunately, it wears out its welcome about two-thirds through, which means -- no kidding -- 45 more minutes to go.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4

Hollywood has got to clean up its act --- and that goes for you, Mr. Tarantino!

Full Review

There's something about [Tarantino's] directorial delectation in all these acts of racial violence that left me not just physically but morally queasy.

Full Review

Like the earlier movie, in which Jewish-American soldiers assassinate Hitler, this one draws heavily on minority group revenge fantasy, the only difference being that the trick isn't as impressive the second time around.

Full Review

Whereas there was savage beauty and irony in the '60-'70s violence of Penn, Peckinpah, and Leone, the coda of 'Django Unchained' is mere benumbing splatter.

Full Review

It's too grueling to enjoy and too sloppy to respect.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4