Situation Normal: All Things Reek THC

Rating: 7/10 (18 December 2009)

Inglourious Basterds is not a World War II movie made by Quentin Tarantino, it rather is a Quentin Tarantino movie taking place in a World War II era that has all the comic book charms in the galaxy to it. Quentin has a masterful understanding of comic book character handling and related dialog development, but, to be honest, he usually has little more than that to offer which is the most fruitful trait of this delivery, yet ends up as its necessary constraint as well, since Quentin satisfies with delivering Ultimate Badassness, failing to notice the moment by which he already told everything worth to be told about it.
Other than that, the movie really has no actual shortcomings. It is crystal-solid, crystal-clear comic book cinema that Quentin made for himself to entertain himself, primarily. I find nothing wrong with that. A beautiful cinematic accomplishment with a narrative language which, as hinted, gives you all worth to be given on the semi-superhero comic book register, almost inviting you, mocking you to realize that there is one and only ONE character in the entire film and that is: The Badass.
Not just a random Badass. The Ultimate Badass. In Quentin Tarantino's mind, dialog has no other narrative channel to flow through than fluffing a character's ego twice as big as her/his verbal challenger succeeded doing that one sentence earlier. Everyone has a set of carefully researched, total brutal oneliners begging to be delivered, in fact, one has the impression that Quentin makes his movies in order to be able to deliver his most recent-, total brutal oneliners.
But, at the end of the day, - and during all that, mind you - you see the exact same character in every one of them, in case you were wondering, it is: The Badass. Tarantino's Badass archetype puts on precisely drawn cartoon masks you call mannerisms, expressing their harshly limited, though entertaining dimensions from the exact same-, yet sadly separate THC private-Universe as the others inhabit. Connections in these separate private Universes are happening through carefully staged acts of fragile causality. In other words: if you are Tarantino and you are about to deliver a five minute "dialogmonologue", first you showcase how Badass your character is - because this is the only character you have a concept of, remember? - then, when you managed to draw your Badass character, you will be busy returning to the plot by finally putting two sentences into her/his mouth that has relevance to the plot.
These weed-driven self-declarations of individual awesomeness are of focal importance in this movie, which, ultimately, is a firm Tarantino delivery with elegant plot twists and purified WW2 novelty vibes to it. The movie has no particular, rigorous seriousness, yet, fortunately recognizes that it does not even have any need for those to be a film worth scrutinizing.
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