And dirtier and dirtier

Rating: 6/10 (6 September 2009)

The original Inglorious Bastards had the tag-line, "Everything the Dirty Dozen did, they did it dirtier!" Other than that, Inglorious Bastards had next to nothing to do with The Dirty Dozen. Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds has little to do with Inglorious Bastards, minus a generalized subplot that is more like a synopsis. Instead, it is a lot closer to a remake of The Dirty Dozen, complete with a few word-by-word lines (such as the whole "All of our rotten eggs in one basket--and we're going to blow up the basket") and the same vaguely moral-disturbing ending in the name of committing Nazis to carnage.
Otherwise, the movie is somewhat of a mis-sell. The trailers and the title have it that this movie is about Brad Pitt's character and his fun-loving Yank-accented Nazi hunting, but actually the bulk of this movie is a vengeance plot involving one Shosanna, daughter of a murdered Jewish family who finds herself in key position to eliminate all of the heads of the Nazi party in one explosion of burning celluloid (and I'm speaking literally, here). The Inglourious Basterds running around the country-side just provide a little extra bang for your buck (again, speaking literally), and in the same way, the real emotional base of the movie is Shosanna whereas the Basterds are mostly, well, comedic relief.
Except they're not funny. They're monsters. But that's all "c'est la guerre." It's not even really worth getting into the specifics of why these people should be detested rather than appreciated, because nobody cares, so I won't even bother. It's just now that I've sat with audience members laughing at the borderline personality in "Observe and Report", cheering the sociopathic Rorschach in "Watchmen", and applauding the megalomaniacal Basterds in this flick, I'm feeling modern audiences are becoming severely poor judges of character.
Anyway, Tarantino refines his logocentric palate with a few more languages (and has some fun with them, hopefully to the chagrin of a few subtitle-phobic audience members expecting more Sam Jackson/John Travolta tete-a-tete), some very tense moments build based on the use of said languages (refreshing), and eventually Shosanna's vengeance narrative comes to a very satisfying close--and one that may not be quite what you expect. Meanwhile, the movie is laced with slightly more oblique movie-references than usual, providing extra interest to those trivia geeks out there. Indeed, this is still Tarantino being in top form, a real testament to his skills as a director if not a particularly "good" movie per se. Minus a few b-movie references and sight gags, the faux-serial structure (which actually didn't make much sense), and the Basterds themselves, this is a very tense and original WWII thriller. Add those things and this is back into pastiche-land, a not-unenjoyable place where some things might not really fit, but it's all done for love.
--PolarisDiB