A dangerous and irresponsible film from a director who used to be great...

Rating: 4/10 (11 March 2011)

Reviewing "Inglourious Basterds" is a moral dilemma. I know it has everything to please the fans, it's entertaining, masterfully directed and edited, and features memorable characters portrayed by a big-star cast, and the whole film is carried by one of the greatest supporting and villainous performance of the last ten years. Christoph Waltz, as Hans Landa, is an unforgettable character, magnetic even in one blink or a crazy smirk. But this is a supporting performance, not enough to redeem the film.
"Inglourious Basterds" is the living proof that Tarantino lost his touch. The "Kill Bill" series is a masterpiece of movie homage, something that worked because you could feel that Tarantino made this film with his heart, he grew up with Asian Kung-Fu films, and made a masterpiece out of it. But now, why does he feel the need to rely all his movies on that concept? After the drive-in B-movies in "Death Proof" which beyond the action, was just an exercise of testosterone stimulation, and a tentative to resurrect Kurt Russel's character as he did for Travolta, I started thinking Tarantino was slipping. But I didn't take the movie that seriously and I thought even Tarantino is allowed to loosen up a bit, and please the fans of the genre, with a fun to watch and well-crafted action flick.
But now, we have a film nominated in the Cannes' festival, in many glorious competitions, including the Oscars. It's something presented as a new "Pulp Fiction", so the movie takes itself so seriously before its release, it deserves a serious and honest critic  and all I can say is that I will probably never get the love for "Inglourious Basterds", a film where Tarantino caricatures himself, disguising barbarity and cruelty under the fallacious legitimacy of fighting the quintessential evil enemy, the Nazis. Done intelligently, it could have been an interesting film, but in this world where violence is preached by fanatics and fantasized by lunatics, this is (despite Waltz and his hilarious Italian scene) an irresponsible film whose plot twist made it even more dangerous, as it conveyed the dangerous message that this was the way it should have been done, therefore, this is the way WE should treat our enemies.
And if violence, even in the cruelest and barbaric form is legitimated when you fight evil, you've got to question yourself about the meaning of that word. Is it right to carve a swastika in a soldier's forehead to condemn him for perpetual shame when he was just doing his duty. Were we supposed to cheer during the scalping? Or the scene where an officer's head was reduced to a pulp with a baseball bat? Were we supposed to cheer when Diane Kruger's character shot the guy she had just guaranteed his safety, or the soldier who was mercilessly shot at the end and then inevitably scalped? These scenes made me nauseous and hating the movie because it just encouraged the most odious and dangerous racist fantasies, in such a patronizing way, I wonder how come no fan felt insulted.
This is a dangerous film, definitely glorifying violence by making it cool, bad-ass, and legitimate just because there's something "naturally" evil in the enemy, and it's not just violence, it's the graphicness, the cold-blooded horrific way of killing, and the fact that it's supposed to make people clap and enjoy the gruesomeness ... this is an irresponsible case of glorifying violence, and the script's biggest flaw. I guess the Shoshanna's subplot was a way to inject the eternal revenge story, supposedly the heart of the film. But for some reason, the actress didn't touch me, she was playing it too cool and aggressive, and the part that definitely killed the character was the glamorous sequence that looked more like an advertisement for cosmetics than anything else. Shosanna who witnessed the killing of her family, behaves like some kind of sexy James Bond girl. Probably not bad acting, but a too coldly artificial writing to be believable.
(And if a great performance can't redeem a film I guess, a bad one can also ruin it... like the guy who played the projectionist, Marcel, his delivery of lines was so laughable I wonder if Tarantino was really behind the camera when it was shot)
Now, I know the fans will over-analyze the film talking about its self-referential aspect, our approach to violence, a great homage to classic war films and I must concede that when I watched the opening scene, I thought it would be a masterpiece, but this 'homage' thing must stop now, it's okay for one or two scenes, but basing the whole movie structure on that has been a little bit overused by Tarantino ... it's time now to come with something more original, and less irresponsible.
I say 'irresponsible' because Tarantino became like a cinematic label, as if any of his movies would automatically please the fans, I don't mean this as an insult, Tarantino was my favorite director five years ago, I've always thought the guy defined "coolness" in films, he was for me the-coolest-director-in-the-world and whatever he made, said and touched, was cool and entertaining. That's why I think this movie is irresponsible, because Tarantino uses his undeniable talent and creativity to communicate an extremely dangerous message, and many of his younger fans will think it's cool and bad-ass to scalp the evil enemy, because Tarantino said so, and Brad Pitt did it.
To conclude, "That's NOT a bingo!" and the popularity of this film is revealing of a very sad reality where movies like "Saving Private Ryan" are considered as one of the greatest war films ever, and "Inglourious Basterds" praised as a masterpiece, even by Tarantino, in his pretentious closing lines  a movie I expected to like, and I ended up hating it with intensity.