Glorious

Rating: Null/10 (10 August 2009)

"You probably heard we ain't in the prisoner-takin' business; we in the killin' Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin'." Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)
Raine pretty much summarizes the story of Inglourious Basterds as Quentin Tarantino concocted it: A WWII assassin crew headed by Raine (Pitt's southern accent is overcooked but impressively true to the Tarantino style). As a matter of fact, I like to think of this anti-Nazi/ SS film as showcasing the director's own SS: style and swagger.
Working the famous Dirty Dozen assassin idea with his usual homage attitude, Tarantino adds his cinema obsession as a deadly motif occupying much of the movie. This is the director as we know him--wisecracking (see the opening quote), allusive, irreverent, outrageous (he does play with the outcome of the war), not with the originality of Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill, but with the inventiveness of Mel Brooks' Springtime for Hitler sequence in The Producers.
But fewer laughs, although I enjoy pulpy ones like this from Raine: "If you ever wanna eat a Sauerkraut sandwich again take your Wiener Schnitzel lickin' finger and point out on this map what I wanna know.".
Tarantino (like any maturing auteur, it becomes his film rather than its title) breaks his own mold by telling a linear story about the assassins and their final solution; we don't even witness the ascendancy of the Basterds, just their beginning in 1941 and their maturation in 1944. Additionally, more than one scene, for instance the opening Nazi visitation to a French farm and a bistro party, are much longer than other scenes I remember from his canon.
Yet, they pass quickly enough, so adept is the director at building tension with climax certain in the near future. Perhaps this lingering is evidence of his willingness to let narrative take over rather than quirkiness or film reference (he was, after all, a notoriously knowledgeable video store clerk).
Although other Tarantino films will long be remembered after this successful WWII satire is short-listed, few will be as close to mainstream thriller while staying far outside the restrictive conventions. It is one of the best movies this summer, standing next to Katherine Bigelow's Hurt Locker by saying something important about war and entertaining at the same time.
Their "business is a-boomin'."