Imperfect Bastards

Rating: 7/10 (4 September 2009)

Quentin Tarantino's new film "Inglourious Basterds" is an exercise in style and suspense, and was everything we have come to expect from Tarantino: wit, blood, and plenty of talk. The talk doesn't bother me, but it does seem to be the number one complaint anyone mentions. The dialog is thrilling, probably more so than the bloody violence scenes. Brad Pitt was solid, but the show is all Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa. He absolutely steals the show as "The Jew Hunter." Let me rave first about "Chapter One" of the film, "Once upon a time... in Nazi occupied France." The scene reminds me very much of the lead up to the violence in Igmar Bergmann's "The Virgin Spring." The suspense builds to a horrible (and very real) climax that introduces us to the blood that we'll be seeing plenty of in later scenes.
However, I can be sure that thirty minutes of the film could've been cut without missing a single story point. The soundtrack at segments can be extremely well executed, bar one scene where Shoshanna Dreyfus is getting "dressed to kill." Now, if I'm not mistaken, it's a remix of a Johnny Cash song. (Now I could accept a lot of things where the soundtrack was concerned, but this was simply laughable.) Plot wholes abound, but if you don't pay too close attention to details, this won't bother you, as you will be paying more attention to the sharp dialog and the interesting characters too much to care.
And if you're looking for any sort of historical accuracy, don't watch it. Unfortunately for me, I am a big history buff, and it did distract me from fully enjoying the ending of the movie.
I'm leaving a lot of details out, some of them I consider too glaring to miss writing about, but I feel that it should be considered entertainment first and foremost. And where that is concerned, 80 percent of it is incredibly entertaining, especially Waltz, followed by Pitt. Judge for yourself. Either spend the 10 bucks, or rent it. Either way, you will walk away from the experience with plenty to talk about.