Some requests require no session, auth, locale, csrf check, message, or many other middlewares. Especially, there are some useless db connection in django_session. Skip unnecessary middlewares can make the request much faster.

shortcutmiddleware.py

#
# in your settings file
#

# middleware settings
MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'some.essential.Middleware',
    
    # this is the home-made shortcut middleware, put right above the middlewares you want to skip
    'apps.middleware.ShortcutMiddleware',
    
    # some middlewares you want to skip
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    ...
)

# paths you want to apply the shortcut
SHORTCUT_MIDDLEWARE_PATHS = [
    '/heavy_request_path_supposed_to_be_fast/',
]


#
# create you own middleware.py
#

from django.conf import settings

class ShortcutMiddleware(object):

    """
    doc: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/middleware/
    """

    def process_view(self, request, view_func, view_args, view_kwargs):
        """
        process_view will be called just before django called view
        """
        if request.path in settings.SHORTCUT_MIDDLEWARE_PATHS:
            return view_func(request, *view_args, **view_kwargs)
        return None  # if preoces_view returns None, continue to process other middlewares