Christoph Waltz - an Oscar performance within a pile!

Rating: 4/10 (20 October 2010)

It's a useless thing to post a review on a movie that already has more than a thousand reviews on IMDb. But the division between people who loved it and those who hated it is rather fascinating so I'll add my two cents.
I'm a person who's of the later opinion. I just don't like Tarantino and his way of making an "homage" to me just seems like a cheap way of stealing stuff, that's not known or obscure at best for a mainstream audience but insults the true fan.
I'm also a fan of 'alternate realities'-story lines (I recommend Ian McKellen in "Richard III", taking the age-old Shakespeare play into the time of WW2) and not necessarily too concerned with historic accuracy. In my mind, one could have done something with the story of "Inglorious Basterds" but what ruins it in this film is the horrible acting.
Not even talking about Brad Pitt hamming it up like it really was a real grind house film but what in the heavens could have provoked any director to put Eli Roth in front of a camera? I realise that there isn't much real acting involved in a homage to exploitation flicks but at least a little charisma, a little character for an protagonist in a mainstream movie – is that too much to ask for? We now move on to the German imports: Till Schweiger, Daniel Brühl and Gedeon Burkhard. Schweiger divides the audience in Germany. He's by fans depicted as the Ben Affleck of German cinemas; by adversaries he's considered as a German version of Ben Affleck who's performance is annoying but who can produce a sellable love comedy during Summer. Brühl is another actor who leaves critics divided. 'A great talent in the making', say some; 'an actor with a steady repertoire of four facial expressions', say the others (three of which are featured in "Inglorious Basterds". And of course Burkhard, prior to "Inglorious Basterds" a regular in many-a daily soap-opera that are geared toward pensioners and the unemployed. The rest of the cast is relatively unknown to me and I'm relative grateful for that. And, adding insult to injury for hammy acting and lazy direction: the caricature of Hitler and his regime, just a few years after an audience has applauded the performances of Bruno Ganz and others in "Der Untergang".
I give this film four stars  no, I give the actor Christoph Waltz four stars. And another Oscar  because he deserves it. Skills and a presence that rivals performances of contemporary roles like Heath Ledger as the Joker or Javier Badem in movies like "No Country for Old Men" and "The Sea Inside". That's the fascinating aspect about the movie: putting up 1st class actors against 2nd and 3rd rate: the result is "Inglorious Basterds".