Now showing: Django Unchained **

Stars: Christoph Waltz, Kerry Washington, Jamie Foxx, Leonardo Di Caprio
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Rated: R
Showing: Southside Theatre. Fri-Sat 7.45pm; Sun 4.15pm, 7.45pm; Mon-Thurs 7.45pm.
Runtime: 165 minutes
Drama, western

Django Unchained, director/writer Quentin Tarantino’s wantonly violent, slave-era revenge fantasy, has about as much to do with the holiday spirit as a grinch with a shotgun.

But opening the film on Christmas Day plays right into Tarantino’s sense of pop-culture irony and mainstream subversion. That he’s also juggling such issues as race and retribution with all the finesse and wisdom of a child tossing hand grenades only makes the whole thing even more combustible.

Too bad there isn’t a better movie to along with all the flame-throwing bravado.

A mash-up of the 1966 Italian spaghetti western Django and early ‘70s blaxploitation westerns like The Legend of Nigger Charley, Django Unchained offers Tarantino yet another chance to show off his Pulp Fiction-style twist on history. While it worked with his smart-aleck revisionist take on WWII in Inglourious Basterds, it just comes across as contrived and excessive here.