Quentin Tarantino returns, and fans of his instantly discernable directorial style will be more than satiated with his latest offering.

Accompanied by a soundtrack as wild as the inhabitants of its era, Django Unchained takes the Western genre and twists it with Tarantino’s signature style, flair and guts (lots of guts).

It’s two years before the American Civil War. Django (Jamie Foxx) is a slave who has recently been sold to new owners. His previous owners employed three plantation overseers who are now wanted men, making Django a desirable asset for a German bounty hunter, Dr. Shultz (Christoph Waltz), whose penchant for articulate conversation and dislike of slavery makes him a stranger in his time and locale, both ideologically and culturally.

Django agrees to join forces with Shultz in exchange for assistance in freeing Django’s wife Broomhilda (Kerry Washington), who has been sold to one of the largest, most vicious plantations in the South.

Known as Candieland, and ruled by the ruthless second-generation cotton farmer, Calvin Candie (Leonardo DiCaprio), this homestead is only home to greed and grotesque oppression. To get his wife out alive is going to require Django to achieve the impossible—and you know it’s going to get bloody.

Despite its sometimes-cartoonlike façade, Tarantino has achieved something powerful with this film. Not only does it entertain and demonstrate all of his hallmark traits of genre poaching, exaggerated violence, and dialogue dripping with wit and intelligence—this is a film that at points makes you feel truly uncomfortable. And it should.

The horrors of the institution of slavery in America may be an ugly history that few wish to re-hash. But this is a relatively recent history, and one whose aftermath continues to have an impact on contemporary racial politics. Throughout this film you’re plainly invited to be entertained, but it is to Tarantino’s credit that you cannot quite escape the horror of very real history, or the invitation to think about what is serving as fodder for entertainment.

In his recent Golden Globes press conference, Tarantino shocked with his unapologetic approach to using the ‘n’ word. His argument is that to avoid it would be to ‘whitewash’ or to ‘lie’. Whether you agree with him or not, you have to admire his willingness to use his medium to tackle some of the more discomforting truths about the course of human history.

Despite the serious subject matter, Tarantino—never one to take himself seriously, as is again evidenced by arguably his most attention-grabbing cameo to date (at least for Australian audiences)—cannot help but bring a dark playfulness to his film.

Not for the faint of heart or soft of stomach, it would seem that the only person truly without chains is the director himself; and fans of his brand of cinematic violence will revel in what is essentially a powerful and well written film, that speaks directly to the heart of his generation of cinemagoers.

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Leonardo DiCaprio
Rating: TBC
Runtime: 165min
Release Date: 24 Jan
Reviewer rating: 4/5