(AP Photo/The Weinstein Co., Francois Duhamel)
When Quentin Tarantino announced he was making a revenge flick about a group of eight Jewish American soldiers during World War II who go on a Nazi killing spree behind enemy lines, Inglorious Basterds sounded as if it had the potential to become his wildest, most violent, most outrageous film yet.
Diehard Quentin Tarantino fans fantasized about soaking in the brilliance of eight individual Inglorious Basterds character profiles and watching each of them unleash their vengeance on some Nazi douchebags. Aside from one quickie scene where Eli Roth gives a Nazi a couple of whacks to the head with a baseball bat, there was very little of that signature wild Tarantino violence. Quentin Tarantino told Howard Stern that he was inspired to make a classic “Dirty Dozen style” war film, but he seems to have left most of that footage on the cutting room floor.
Inglourious Basterds only focuses on the Inglourious Basterds themselves about half of the time, and it’s the less compelling half of the movie by far. Inglorious Basterds probably should have been called “Melanie Laurent’s Character-terds”. The scenes where Laurent’s Jew-in-hiding character Shosanna Dreyfus goes face to face with the megapsycho SS agent played by Christoph Waltz are defintely worth watching--it’s just unclear what they were doing in Inglourious Basterds.
While Quentin Tarantino’s self-proclaimed masterpiece attempts to satisfy it’s audience by concluding with a building full of exploding Nazis, Inglourious Basterds leaves fans hungry for those character driven individual stories that made Tarantino famous. Maybe it’s unfair to expect Quentin Tarantino to keep making those great old Los-Angeles-gangster-bag-of-money movies he made in those sweet, innocent, outrageously violent 1990s flicks, but then what’s the point of building a reputation at all?
Quentin Tarantino’s “magnum opus” leaves fans with the sense that any one of the Reservoir Dogs could have single-handedly kicked all of the Inglourious Basterds irrelevant asses. Even Mr. Pink.
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Comments
Best review of this movie I've read so far, on Examiner or elsewhere. Too many people think a review is just a recap with some vapid fawning praise at the end.
We must have seen a different movie. And why would you want any director to keep rehashing the same old tropes...like making hamburger everyday because you're so good at it. I think you missed the whole point of this movie.
Judi--I'm quite sure I DID miss the whole point of this movie. Could you enlighten me, because I truly don't know.
Thanks for the review, was going to see the movie....
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