Running Time: 180 minutes Django Unchained is one of those films that people proclaim as too long before they've even seen it. Coming in at three hours, this looked an exploitive and glorified B-movie, overblown in a way we're all too accustomed to by Quentin Tarantino. It' was an odd criticism after such success with a similar revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds, but there's nothing like pre-release denouncing of Oscar hopefuls. Now, Django is too long, there's no way around it. It takes almost an hour for the big villain to even get mentioned and entire sequences early on feel completely superfluous, but there's enough smarts in the script and brilliance in the performances (particularly Leonardo DiCaprio as a detestable slave owner) to forgive the dragged out elements. What stops it sitting alongside Basterds is that despite being half an hour longer there's less going on; there's no major subplots, with the film sticking religiously to its central plot. The real problem with Django is that it kills off the two most interesting characters within seconds of each other, leaving us with a rather uninteresting lead for its final twenty minutes. What could be cut? Going for the low-hanging fruit, Tarantino's cringe-worthy cameo, but beyond that a general refinement of the story, getting to Candyland quicker and less umming-and-ahhing after the plan goes awry would make something great.
