A Mixed Bag

Rating: 3/10 (7 September 2009)

This movie starts out with a set of scenes that will have you on the edge of your seat...just stunning, terrifying, and tense. There are many scenes that are like that when Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Daniel Bruhl, and Diane Kruger are in front of the camera, but Brad Pitt was just awful...over-the-top posing, hammy acting. Pitt ruined Terry Gilliam's "Twelve Monkeys" for me in the same way - the man is a terrible actor.
What also marred the movie for me is Quentin Tarantino's penchant to offset his use of gratuitous violence with slap-stick humor and sophomoric dialogues. For some insane reason, he also breaks the mood of the movie with chapter titles and cartoony identifying balloons as if the audience was too stupid to know who Joseph Goebbels or Martin Borman might be. Finally, the ending is so improbable and weak, that if you are not conflicted about what this movie was to be by then, you will be when the credits roll.
So, despite the impressive acting by Waltz, Laurent, Bruhl, and Kruger, both Brad Pitt, with his acting, and Quentin Tarantino, with his script and cartoony intrusions conspired to make this a "mixed bag". Too bad that Quentin couldn't have stayed with those wonderful actors from the start, kept out of the way, and found a better lead than Brad Pitt. There are a half-dozen actors who could have matched Waltz etal in Hollywood from Sean Penn, Johnny Depp, Matt Damon, to Denzel Washington.