Quentin Tarantino, whose film plots are often fueled by a mania for vengeance, has struck again with the Oscar-winning "Django Unchained." The 165-minute movie is an overwhelming spectacle of violence, lust and excess that features unforgettable characters and performances.
Tarantino's previous film, the revisionist "Inglourious Basterds," presented Jewish and other victims of the Nazis taking mighty, ahistorical revenge. "Django Unchained" (released in Japan as "Django Tsunagarezarumono") is cut from the same cloth. It features a former slave on a mission to cut down, often literally, white plantation owners across the Deep South.
"I know the extremism of my role is something you've rarely seen and ... not likely to see me ever repeating," says Samuel L. Jackson. He plays a 76-year-old antebellum slave who is excessively subservient and therefor "doesn't even start to define what 'Uncle Tom' means."