Messy and indecisive

Rating: 7/10 (23 September 2011)

Being a devoted Tarantino fan, for me this movie was a disappointment. Inglourious Basterds has its flashes of genius, as you'd expect from a Tarantino movie, but they're lost in a muddle of half-baked ideas and characters, and in the end it's probably his weakest movie so far, lacking in the one thing that even Death Proof had - energy and pace. The film does have some mentionable qualities, that are enough to make it watchable and even quite enjoyable - as you would expect from Tarantino, it's fantastically professional in every aspect, especially cinematography and sound. Some of the characters have tons of potential, and the actors are usually spot on (another honorable mention to Christoph Waltz), but there are so many characters that not one of them is developed enough to be satisfying. Tarantino fails to juggle a large number of plots and sub-plots the way he did in Jackie Brown in Pulp Fiction, and they never intertwine in any meaningful way. And worst of all, it's not even that controversial or offensive - Tarantino took a lot of liberties with history, and he certainly created violence that's more realistic and more explicit than ever before, but it's really just violence for the sake of itself. I realize I'm in a minority here, but I don't recommend this movie. I'm not saying don't watch it - there's a lot here to enjoy. But in the end, it's just not that good.