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What it's about:
As the Nazis prepare to host a propaganda film premiere in a Paris cinema during the German occupation of France, The Basterds, a crack team of Nazi-killing American Jews and defectors, attempt to infiltrate the event and assassinate Hitler.
What we thought:
Usually "indulgent" is the word we look for when a director makes a 2 hour 45 minute-long film. But for all its swagger, for all its side-tracking and zaniness and golden Tarantino moments, Inglourious Basterds can perhaps be remembered as the movie where Tarantino didn’t indulge himself enough.
It’s when he really cuts loose – those moments that film school professors will be snorting disgustedly or hiding the party in their pants – that Basterds is at its most watchable. The typical Tarantino badass Col Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), for example, is introduced exactly the way we would expect to meet Shaft – with a huge, funky logo and an over-the-top backstory involving buckets of blood.
We have Kelly’s Heroes, we have Saving Private Ryan already, why couldn’t Inglourious Basterds just dispense with plot altogether and let its maniacal characters have free roam? They’re a wonderful bunch, to be sure. Brad Pitt’s hammy acting somehow befits the self-proclaimed white Apache, Lt. Aldo Raine. Daniel Brühl is disarming as the Nazi sniper-slash-actor Federick Zoller, while Mélanie Laurent is a fiery and determined Shoshanna, a vengeful Jewish heroine.
Christoph Waltz must be singled out, however. The man deserves an award if not his own movie for his portrayal of the creepazoid Gestapo officer, Col. Hans Landa. Ruthlessly efficient, the officer known as "The Jew Hunter” can be accused of many things, but let it never be said he doesn’t offer service with a smile.
Expect spectacular violence. Expect long, winding conversations (and interrogations) about this or that. Expect to be sucked into Tarantino’s wacky pseudo-historic world and its grand finale. Inglourious Basterds is entertaining, just not relentlessly so. It’s all about reining in your better instincts – for the audience, to enjoy this schlocky caper, and for Tarantino, to really hit it out of the park the next time round.
