Tarantino rides again in Django Unchained, his homage to spaghetti westerns. His most accessible movie to date, Django carries many of the trademark touches – spurty violence, death-black humour, Pinter-esque conversations of pressure-cooker tension. But it‘s also funny, colourful, and – unusually - on the side of the angels.

Django (Jamie Foxx) has fallen into slavery, cruelly separated from his wife who‘s been sold to another plantation. Rescued by enigmatic German bounty hunter Dr King Schultz (Christoph Waltz) the duo become partners in a bounty-hunt spree masking the search for Django‘s wife. Unfortunately, she‘s on Candie Land, the farm of vicious landowner Calvin Candie (DiCaprio). Posing as the most evil of characters – a negro selling negroes – Django plans to steal his bride from under Candie‘s nose. But getting out alive is the hardest part.

At heading on for three hours, Django Unchained is a big ask. But from the get-go you‘re in the hands of a maestro. Soon as you see the quack-doctor‘s carriage, an outsize molar swaying away on a spring on its roof, Tarantino has set the tongue-in-cheek tone for the movie.

Jamie Foxx‘s flat performance as Django sets him as the straight-man to Waltz‘s film-stealing brilliance as the witty, mercurial plotter Dr Schultz. And Christoph Waltz‘s fluency with Tarantino‘s delicious language is funny, lyrical and captivating. A pole-cat of a character, his danse macabre with DiCaprio is much more intricate, death-defying and nerve-shredding than Django‘s inevitable bullet-ridden showdown.

Riffing on the 60s Django movie – and incorporating a cameo from Franco Nero, the original Django – Tarantino is still dabbling in his movie toybox. But here the story is given room to breathe. Uncluttered by Tarantino‘s fetish for inter-titles and time-slip sequences, it‘s about as mature as he‘s ever been, morally and visually.

But his movies have taught us never to take for granted who‘ll live and who‘ll die. And that‘s a masterful stroke here. We root for Django and Schultz. But the tension is palpable, the ending‘s not obvious. And so one of Tarantino‘s most original contributions to cinema – the queasy, nerve-shredder scenes of unpredictability – keep you guessing almost to the end.

A mandingo-wrestling bout finished off with a hammer. A slave savaged by dogs. Skull-exploding gunshots. Yes, he‘s not forgotten his fans. Most horrific of all though is Tarantino‘s own late cameo – with a terrible cockney accent surely designed to make Dick Van Dyke feel good. But his pay-off is amusing.

Intelligent, cine-literate, quietly-paced but never less than enthralling thanks to Christoph Waltz, DiCaprio and to Tarantino‘s juicy script, Django Unchained is well worth seeing on the big screen. And thankfully it‘s not a spaghetti western at all. It‘s much more fun than that.