Review: 'Django Unchained' is brilliantly acted across the board

Django Unchained: What Kind of Fantasy Is This? Two years before the Civil War, a freed slave named Django becomes a bounty hunter because he can't think of any job more awesome than killing white guys for money. Wearing anachronistic sunglasses

Director Spike Lee called the movie "disrespectful" to slavery and says he won't see it. PEOPLE's Alynda Wheat, who is, incidentally, a black woman, said "The first hour is brilliant."

Tarantino is possessed by two emotions—love and revenge—and the over-all subject of the movie is essentially a counterfactual historical warning: that the South got off easily with the Civil War when, in a proper balance of

It's funny, offbeat, and brutal. Based in the American South during the times of slavery, Jamie Foxx straps on a six-shooter or two, some cowboys boots and hat in "Django Unchained." Foxx's Django character is taken by a bounty hunter, played by

Unlike "Lincoln," "Django Unchained" affords room at the heart of its narrative for compelling and assertive African-American characters, both heroic (Foxx in the title role) and otherwise (Samuel L Jackson, memorably repellent as a house servant who