Too many flaws

Rating: 5/10 (15 December 2014)

It's quite a good story and gripping, enthralling all the way through. It's only afterwards you might realise that it is total fiction even though set in the midst of real events – that gets confusing.
There are four main characters. In the order of the merit of their performances, Christoph Waltz plays Hans Landa, a German Army officer who has the job of hunting down Jews in France in 1941. He is smart, suave, and charming, but ruthless, heartless and in the end, devious and scheming in looking after his own neck and wallet. Waltz does a superb job.
Equally good is Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus who then becomes Emmanuelle Mimieux, the owner and operator of a small cinema in Paris. She knows about Landa and fears him, and shows it. When Landa leaves, her relief also shows. She is calm and collected as she plans and carries out the dramatic ending.
Acting is more than just saying the words of the script, really great actors show in the expression, the emotion needed. Waltz and Laurent both do this very well.
Daniel Brühl is Frederik Zoller, a sniper in the German Army who gets a propaganda film made about him that Goebbels want to use. He meets Emmanuelle and tries to befriend her.
Brad Pitt plays Aldo Raine, of Apache and Jewish descent. He leads a clandestine band who ambush isolated German patrols, kill all but one of them and disfigure the survivor to send a message to all Nazis. Alas, Pitt is mediocre in this role, unconvincing and sometimes looking hopelessly out of place. He never gives thoughtful emphasis to anything said. Disappointing and perhaps a failing in directing?
Other flaws are that they could have done a much better job in finding a Hitler look-alike, and the same for Churchill – Timothy Spall does a better job of that. There are a lot of scenes with sub-titles. If I read the S-Ts, I might miss the actors performance? They conveniently speak English quite a lot. Then there are the hand-written sub-titles to tell us who various characters are, as if we really cared whether Goring and others are in the plot?