Politically tainted // Excellent cinematic experience

Rating: 5/10 (19 August 2018)

Let's start with

the good: Tarantino every once in a while is going to get into a zone and produce a superb concept, style and atmosphere and this time he made Inglorious Basterds. The concept was really good here as far as a purely cinematic experience. It's realistic and enticing from that very first scene, arguably one of the best intros ever. The rest of the film is a succession of equally powerful scenes, intense/suspenseful or flat out explosive, sometimes graphic.

The characters are lots of fun, almost comic book like for some (well for most, really). The subplots and independent little stories each bring lots of positives and an ongoing dynamism to the film which never lets down pace wise. We're fed a ton of entertainment, but not in a linear or repetitive way (as with all action films), and with each progression there's new suspense or climaxes to be met.
Some characters have remained classics among the young mainstream, as well as certain quotes.
Technically, there's a great melding of all traditional cinematographic genres: romance, comedy, action, historic, drama... and the film is consistent at being just as good when it starts as when it finishes, without any drop in intensity, or quality, all the way til the end.
It's just got that contagious and exciting aura and movie magic that only very few pictures manage to generate. It's special, and if you're intrigued by the start, you'll not want to look away for all 2h33 of it.
-The bad: the film carries a strongly partisan view and hijacks over-the-top tongue in cheek comedy as a pretext to push its own agenda. This isn't a film that you could call politically neutral, at all. Too bad as the rest was so good as contemporary cinema, but the non-cinematic commentary and motive of the film taint it quite badly. Easily could've done without the politicizing, and just focused on the fun and strong cinema it is otherwise.