‘Django Unchained’ Reviews: Tarantino’s Latest Scores Big With Critics

If the early reviews for director Quentin Tarantino’s latest cinematic effort Django Unchained are to be believed, then the acclaimed filmmaker’s western could be his best film yet.

In his lengthy review of the flick, Time Magazine critic Richard Corliss explained that Tarantino’s violent endeavor will likely do for westerns what his 1997 heist flick Jackie Brown did for 70s-era blaxploitation movies.

Corliss explained:

“A pastiche that’s nearly as funny as it is long, and quite as politically troubling as it may be liberating, ‘Django Unchained’ is pure, if not great, Tarantino. At 49, after eight features, the writer-director has become his own genre, running weird, violent, maniacally elaborate variations on the movies he learned to love as a Manhattan Beach video-store savant a quarter-century ago.”

While The Hollywood Reporter writer Todd McCarthy seemed to thoroughly enjoy the feature, he explained that some moviegoers may taken offense to the film’s depiction of slavery and its liberal use of the N-word. However, McCarthy said it all serves to fuel the title character’s mission.

He wrote in his review:

“This is a story of justifiable vengeance, pure and simple, and no paleface is spared, even the good German who facilitates a slave’s transformation into a take-no-prisoners hunter of whites who trade in black flesh.”

Peter Debruge from Variety called Django Unchained “an immensely satisfying taste of antebellum empowerment packaged as spaghetti-Western homage” in his review for the film. Entertainment Weekly critic Owen Gleiberman was equally as impressed with the movie, explaining that it essentially “rubs our noses in the forbidden spectacle of America’s racist ugliness.”

As of this writing, the forthcoming western has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 100 percent out of 20 reviews. Although this is likely to change as more reviews pop up, Quentin Tarantino’s latest effort is certainly off to a strong start.

Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Don Johnson, and Leonardo DiCaprio saddle up for Django Unchained on December 25. Will you catch the film in theaters on Christmas Day?