The Revenge of the 'Terds

Rating: 8/10 (6 September 2009)

I approached "Inglourious Basterds" with some major apprehensions based on the film's pre-release buzz. The three issues I found deserving of concern were:
1. Tarantino's reputation for portraying actual events with only a passing nod towards historic accuracy.
2. My distaste for "funny" Nazis.
3. The director's penchant, or perhaps fetish would be more correct, towards the graphic and prurient depiction of gore and violence.
Let me simply say that after seeing " 'Terds," I still believe that these concerns are valid. Yet, thanks to Tarantino's skillful hand, they did not impede my overall enjoyment of the film. First the issue of historic veracity...
Tarantino, perhaps not wishing to stir up any post-JFK (the movie)-like dust-ups, couched this tale between two parenthetical disclaimers. The opening title slide proclaims: "Once Upon A Time..." (It could have added "In a galaxy far away"). The penultimate scene (spoiler alert) is one of Hitler and Goebbels meeting their demise in a flaming French cinema in 1944 when everyone over the age of 10 knows that they died by their own hands in a Berlin bunker one year later. As if the message ("Hey, kids. This is a fantasy!") was still not clear enough, there is the occasional disembodied voice-over, straight out of "The Princess Bride." Point being, that Tarantino reduced the number of theater-goers exiting this film who would ask themselves "Hmm, is this a true story?" down to a statistical insignificant percentage.
The film resembles, in style (if you overlook the goriness) and substance nothing so much as the two "To Be or Not To Be" wartime comedies (with Jack Benny in 1942 and Mel Brooks forty years later). These were screwball comedies set against a very real backdrop of Nazi brutality. The protagonist was also an heroic theater owner. Taken on those terms, Inglourious Basterds succeeds valiantly in propelling the viewer through an at-times bittersweet and at-times hilarious story arc that accelerates skillfully to its dramatic climax.