Sorry sweaty-palmed fanboys - this is one of Tarantino's worst.

Rating: 6/10 (8 November 2010)

Read on before you complain!
I am a fan of Tarantino, so why give Basterds a middling rating, a score similar to such non-classics as Big Man Japan and Silent Hill?
Well after the initial scene there just aren't any scenes that "pop" or are worthy of a zippy description.
IB just isn't as intricate and tricky as I think it wants to be, so we are left with a movie with long drawn out scenes, not enough dialogue worthy of note and insufficient action to fill in the lengthy gaps. I think Tarantino felt this might become known as "the one where some Jewish guys have a crack at Hitler".
As mentioned the best scene in IB is the first with all the hallmarks of a Tarantino special. In essence it is a German soldier politely but forcefully interrogating a Frenchman who he believes to be harbouring Jews, so I'll leave the description at that, because Tarantino makes it so much more that trying to describe it in more detail would be pointless.
In broad terms though it has crackling dialogue, the tension builds throughout and the scene is allowed to play out over about 20 minutes, where other directors might give it 3, get to the payoff and move on.
In Chapter Two we meet the Basterds – in another example of "taking their word for it", as we are informed that the Basterds are an elite team of vicious, mostly Jewish, soldiers hellbent on killing as many Nazis as possible and striking fear into enemy ranks.
We are introduced to a couple of Basterds, a German named Hugo Stiglitz who is infamous and feared (again because we are told so) and the "Bear Jew", a man who carries a baseball bat and beats his victims to a bloody pulp, but mostly they remain a faceless bunch headed by one Bradley Pitt - you might have heard of him.
Speaking of baseball bats, in the real life game of "Rock, Paper, Scissors" I'd take a machine gun over a baseball bat every time. What does the Bear Jew do in combat, hang in the background until someone runs out of bullets? Or wait until a German soldier shows up with a club or bat so it is a fair fight? Seems a pretty inadequate weapon 99% of the time.
We are given a couple of examples as to how the Basterds work, and EVERYONE has seen the speech Aldo Raine (Pitt) gives to his squad applicants, "And I want my scalps!" but they just don't seem that scary or menacing really. Nonetheless (because the plot says so) their reputation gets all the way to Mr Hitler himself, who deems them trouble enough that he takes time out of running a conflict involving several million soldiers to consider how he might deal with them.
The remaining Chapters involve events that bring the main combatants into close proximity so that we might have some sort of climax to the film. In this case a Nazi propaganda film is to be premiered in a small French cinema, with many German dignitaries in attendance, including a man with an abbreviated mustache.
This gives a small window of opportunity for assassins to kill most of the Nazi war machine in one crack, thereby ending the war (apparently). At least in this circumstance Tarantino didn't think small! Of course it leaks out that the premiere is happening and the British intelligence formulate a plan to bring in the Basterds and have them meet with a liaison to crash the premiere and do what they do best.
Need I mention at this point we are about an hour and 40 minutes into the film, and the titular Inglourious Basterds have two on screen kills? Seems a little light in a war movie when they are the most feared soldiers in the entire war doesn't it? This movie isn't overlong, just "over-nothing-worthwhile-happening". I can sit through 2 and a half hours standing on my head if the movie justifies it, but I can't say that Inglourious Basterds gave me sufficient reward for my time, let alone "Bang" for my buck. There were almost more rounds fired in the standoff at the conclusion of Reservoir Dogs! Nazi Colonel Hans Landa, as the "Jew Hunter", is the best thing in the film and it is no surprise that he gets the best dialogue. The scenes in which he features provide some tension and menace that is not really tangible for the remainder of the film.
As mentioned before the Basterds are largely under-utilised but that is also reflective in the fact that they are soldiers and this is a movie largely without battles and action.
Tarantino sticks to his guns though and IB is again a movie made solely on his terms, the long drawn out scenes (many of them boring), considerable use of subtitles - even a bizarre section with a voice-over by Samuel L. Jackson for some reason - the music at times is also way too contemporary for a WW2 film, and if I bagged 300 for that then I must definitely point it out here.
I think it's interesting that Tarantino chose to plot his film in an alternate version of WW2, because in an alternate universe Inglourious Basterds would have far more action and be a far superior film.
Final Rating – 6.5 / 10. As a director Tarantino aims for "cool" above all else. This just ain't that cool, regardless of what the sweaty palmed fanboys think.
P.S. When I looked to IMDb to make sure I spelt a couple names right I saw that IB is currently in the top 100 ranked films of all time. This is surely just a sad joke.
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