Django Unchained (Cert 18, 158 mins, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment) Starring Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz, Leonardo DiCaprio, Kerry Washington, Samuel L Jackson.

****

This blood-soaked western energises a simple tale of redemption with writer-director Quentin Tarantino’s characteristic flair.

Set in 1858, the film boasts some bravura sequences including slow-motion gun fights and snappy flashbacks. However, you can have too much of a good thing. Tarantino’s vision runs to a buttock-numbing 158 minutes and calls out for some tighter editing, including swathes of the final act.

Foxx is tightly wound as a vengeful husband, playing the straight man to larger-than-life performances from Waltz, DiCaprio and Samuel L Jackson as a fire and brimstone-spouting slave.

The story has some surprisingly tender moments, but whenever it seems Tarantino might be going soft, his characters cock their pistols and unleash a blitzkrieg of expletives.

The Sessions (Cert 15, 91 mins, Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment) Starring John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, William H Macy, Moon Bloodgood, Annika Marks, Adam Arkin.

**** 

Inspired by a true story, which was brilliantly immortalised in Jessica Yu’s Oscar-winning 1996 documentary short Breathing Lessons, this is a deeply emotional character study that eschews smuttiness and mawkish sentiment, presenting Mark’s condition with unflinching candour.

Macy provides comic relief as the priest who becomes a confidant, while Hunt bares all for the role, delivering her best performance since As Good As It Gets.

Lying on gurneys and beds for most of the film, Hawkes conveys his character’s maelstrom of insecurities with fearlessness and tenderness.

It’s a virtuoso portrayal of a gentle spirit who refused to be overwhelmed by his disability, and recalls the tour-de-force theatrics of Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. Hawkes really is that good.