So much potential...

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2010)

I was pretty excited to finally get to see this movie after all the hype it received. It looked like a genuinely gritty Tarantino flick that would have all the required cool cut shots, gruesome beatings, and bada** feel to it. I was very disappointed. First of all, if you're one of these people who thinks that beating Nazis to death is wrong, well, don't bother watching this movie. This isn't meant to be some look at the morality of brutal executions, it's supposed to make brutal executions entertaining, something which Tarantino is usually good at. He failed here. The movie is called Inglourious Basterds, yet every single scene with the basterds in it (and I'm not exaggerating here) was shown in the previews. The majority of the movie was a very dull and boring story about a girl who owns a theater which is going to host all the top Nazi brass for a premier. She burns the place down, killing everyone. The basterds... well they unwittingly help by shooting up the crowd and getting themselves blown up. Clever Tarantino, but not his best. This provided some cool shots, but we saw them all in the previews...what a let down. This movie needed to be an hour shorter and have about twice as much basterd perpetrated violence to whet my Tarantino appetite. It seems like he tried to make this movie a bit more mainstream than his others, and managed to gain broader appeal with it. But if you expect more out of your Tarantino flicks, you'll be disappointed in this film. Christoph Waltz outclasses everyone in this film, yet fits in well, and is the only reason I rated this film higher than two stars. He was outstanding, a truly diabolical Tarantino character if there ever was one. Bottom line: This movie could've been so much cooler, so much better, and it just fell short of every mark I felt had been set for it. Perhaps it will grow on me, but I couldn't help feeling cheated.