Shallow, indulgent and pretentious

Rating: 2/10 (23 December 2009)

Anticipating the release of what was supposed to be Quentin Tarantino's return to form, but not necessarily fooled by the almost-radioactively-glowing praise it had received from contributors to IMDb, I had optimistically imagined the film would be strewn with witty dialogue, high tension and atmospheric camera-work. What I saw instead was shallow, indulgent and pretentious. The characters had all the depth of bad comic book caricatures, and scene after scene involved actors having to explain the inconsistencies and downright unlikelihoods in the plot to each other. Any tension intended by the constant interrogations was drowned by repetition of questions and painfully obvious answers. I always knew Bande Apart's latest offering would gain an almost automatic entry into the IMDb Top 250, deserving or otherwise, but its current ranking of 68 shocks me. Tarantino's easily-pleased and over-loyal fans, by enjoying this movie as much as they profess, must share the eroded attention spans of the coked-up sycophants that appear to make up Tarantino's inner circle... seals, faithfully honking their applause for a steady degeneration from one of the world's most exciting directors into the washed-up hack he is quickly becoming. I will stop short of pointing out the Top 250's other most undeserving inclusions, let alone it's many glaring omissions ... movies whose thorough production ethics shame most modern efforts... but I can recommend (especially to any other film lovers out there on this cusp, who suspect the emperor has no clothes) that outgrowing Tarantino, at least, will probably coincide with a major leap forward in their ability to correctly assess the merits of a film. This one sucked.