9. "Django Unchained"

In the American South, shortly before the outbreak of the Civil War, an itinerant German dentist (Christoph Waltz) who's actually a dauntingly capable bounty killer liberates a slave (Jamie Foxx), makes him his partner, then discovers the younger man -- Django by name -- is "a natural" with a gun. Their ensuing itinerary, punctuated by the termination of sundry wanted men, eventually focuses on finding and freeing Django's wife (Kerry Washington) from the crown prince of Mississippi slaveholders (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his Uncle Tom majordomo (Samuel L. Jackson). "Django Unchained" is Quentin Tarantino's full-fledged spaghetti Western, after tapping the eccentric subgenre's style and tropes -- and inimitable music scores -- to season several previous pictures (notably, "Kill Bill"). It runs in excess of two-and-a-half hours and falters in assurance and creative élan for maybe two-and-a-half seconds. The QT hallmarks are in play: eruptive violence, dark humor, windily/wittily ruminative monologues, acutely timed lightning shifts of course and tone, and riveting set-pieces, such as a moral-ethical hilltop debate while, in the valley below, a man plows the soil his blood is soon to soak. Tarantino's outrageousness has the audacity of conviction: "Django Unchained" repatriates the spaghetti Western and imbues it with the crazy integrity of American tall tales. He posits a country in which, one way or another, the watchword is "cash for flesh," and, since just about everybody is traveling under an assumed identity, one must above all stay in character. -- Richard T. Jameson

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(Weinstein Company)