Django

Despite its promising premise and impressive production values, Django (2023) falls short due to the lackluster performances of its cast. While the series boasts a talented ensemble, their delivery is wooden and uninspired, failing to bring life to their characters or engage the audience. Despite the best efforts of the writers and directors, the subpar acting ultimately undermines the series' potential, making it difficult to recommend to viewers specially fans of the original movies. Just count the times that the actors rais their heads slowly to express the scene it was hinching and irritating.

Sure there were some elements of previous versions but It's nothing compared to the original Django movies (Between 1966 and 2012). Where Django had a sad and impenetrable face.

This cowboy was invisible.

Actually, I awarded this series a total of eight stars but I chose to use white ones for the last six as an homage to art.

If world famous paintings like "Black Cat at Midnight in a Coal Bin" tickles your fancy then you'll not want to miss a riveting second of this attempt at art. For me, however, I don't think I should have to sit in a completely dark room and strain my eyes to watch a made for TV series.

Once again the choice to record in visible light (because, well, we can now) was chosen over allowing the audience the opportunity to actually be able to follow the story instead of needing to guess who that shadow actually is and what is he (or she) doing. I threw in the towel after, roughly, fifteen minutes of this and moved on to something else.

Not sure reviews focusing on the mishmash of accents really the point as I imagine accents would have been mongrel mix of immigrant ones back then. Not sure personal comments re Noomi Rapace were necessary either. I was unaware of previous versions so had no expectations but after 2 episodes felt this was trying too hard to have gravitas. The acting stilted with lots of pregnant pauses, knowing stares and as ever liberal use of flashbacks with most of the action in darkness presumably to avoid continuity issues and the need to dress sets.

So it passes the time while playing video games, as a bit too tedious to give full attention to. Hardly the searing new drama the ads proclaim.

I barely watched more than half of the first episode for one very simple reason, that being, I couldn't see what was going on. The grading, brightness and contrast is so dark, even in sequences that are supposed to be under bright sunshine, you can't see what's going on. You can't see faces to tell what expression they have. You can't see buildings or their surroundings. You can't see anything. I'm watching on a 65" OLED and it's just a dark smear across the screen with a vague flickering of candlelight. It could be the greatest series ever filmed, but not being able to see what's actually going on in the scenes spoils any chance of enjoyment. Hard pass from me as a result.

But it's not.

Assuming you have HDR on your TV and you can see what is happening...

The story is convoluted and the flashbacks not handled very well.

The acting is very variable, even by the recognised names.

While the photography is good, it does not make up for the bad acting. Characters performances vary between wooden to manic.

And the accents. Very poor, especially Ms Rapace, most distracting.

The Django character has appeared in several spaghetti westerns over the last fifty years. This series does follow in the established genre but has sacrificed clarity for pretentiousness.

If they make a remake, remember to turn the lights on.