4 Movies That Are Just Far Too Long

4. Django Unchained (2012)

We may as well start with the granddaddy of the super extended run time. If I had to surmise Quentin Tarantino in one word it would be: self-indulgent (Okay, two words with a hyphen). Now, he's been known for self indulgence in the past, the cancerous tumour that was Death Proof, but only recently has it become a massive problem. Django starts well with promising characters and snappy interactions between them, but it descends into tedium as the film doesn't know what to do with the characters once they've been established. The most aggrandising instance of waste in this film is when the characters are enroute to the villain's home turf and they seemed to spend at least thirty minutes of the film on the journey. The only thing I can think to myself is: "GET ON WITH IT!" Nope: Quentin stops several times along the way to enable characters to wax satirical about position of the African-American in the Old West with a flagrant over use of the N- Word. He has the villain of the piece establish his place by having him constantly do and say horrendous things. We get that he's a bad guy, Quentin he owns a slave plantation, which he uses to stage brutal fights, sometimes to the death. When we see him order an escaping slave be torn apart by dogs, or philosophise about how slaves have it in their genes to be subservient. We get it. He's a dick. Add to that the characters stopping to monologue, the overlong third act that just descends into tedium with australian accents and the ultra violence and you have a pointlessly long film that meanders. Though even if you take all these moments out the film is still at least thirty minutes too long. The problem is money. When Tarantino had a strict budget and schedule to work to, he delivered films like Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. Now he has the money to do whatever he wants, we get overstuffed bile like Django.