Cut and Paste again. Patchwork.

Rating: 5/10 (13 September 2011)

Many suspenseful moments, but that's about it. Maybe I've seen too many films, but I kept being reminded of others seen earlier. Several scenes were reminiscent of True Romance: Waltz struck me as very like Walken in that great and original movie. The interrogation scene was fresh as new paint in TR, but here in IB it was starting to feel stale, and it was repeated more than once. IB even has Brad Pitt in a rather minor role; and what about the shootout where everybody starts firing and almost everyone gets killed? The premise was reminiscent of The Dirty Dozen, another fictional story of German officers and women being locked in a large space and then burnt alive. This no doubt makes a number of those who remember the holocaust feel good, but others may just think it reduces those who enjoy it to the same level as the original Nazis.
Like others have said in earlier reviews, this kind of fake history can be amusing while it lasts, up to a point, but in retrospect it's disturbing. Think of Where Eagles Dare, where hundreds of Germans get blown up, have their throats cut, shot down by the dozens. Great stuff. But do kids get to believe this dung is actually true? Scalping? Baseball bat battering? American performance in WWII Europe was in fact pretty second-rate. Ask the participants from any other nation. 70% of the US didn't want to know anything about it from the beginning, and America only came in after the Japanese attacked and Hitler, being barmy, declared war himself, forcing US participation.
The story of IB is a mess and a muddle: did QT just say to himself, what shall I do now? Anything goes, more or less, provided the scene works on its own. These scenes don't have to join up too well. What about the two suicidal machine-gunners shooting down the cinema audience at the end? They didn't seem at all surprised the place was going up in flames and all the doors were locked. With the girl being killed in the projection room there was even an echo of Morituri. And what happened to her black friend? All a bit of a shambles, I fear.
I gave this film five stars too many. Can't believe the overall rating of 8.3.