lesser QT is still great entertainment

Rating: 8/10 (1 September 2009)

In Nazi-occupied France, a group of soldiers make it their mission to kill Nazis. Meanwhile, a Jewish-French cinema owner concocts a plan of revenge.
Writer-director Quentin Tarantino sticks to his usual combo of gore, humour, clever dialogue, and grace notes of actual human emotion. But he departs from it by employing a linear narrative structure. Also, for the first time, he doesn't seem to be paying homage to a particular film genre. And though the dialogue stands out, it's considerably less showy than it's been in his previous films. The speeches don't sound so much like speeches.
There are many scenes of expertly orchestrated tension, and the movie is juicy entertainment (thanks in part to Christoph Waltz's nuanced, committed performance as the main villain). But in the end, there is a sense that this was much ado about very little, which means the movie will probably have low repeatability value. All of Tarantino's movies are cartoonish on some level, but in this case his touch may have been too light to give Basterds longevity.