Life's a Tarantino movie, and then you die

Rating: 9/10 (26 August 2009)

Great movie, but let's face it: it's a bitch to review. Which might be the reason why so many professional critics weren't so glowing about it.
I went into this expecting a spoof of 1979 Italoxploitation schlocker "Inglorious Bastards", a boyish fantasy of a band of gallow birds mcguyvering against the Third Reich. There is that aspect to the movie, and maybe this was Tarantino's original intention, but it's just one aspect of it. In fact, I'd say it's by far the feeblest subplot of the entire film: Brad Pitt leads an ultracruel bunch of renegades who massacre any German (viz Nazi) they can lay their hand on. I thought that Pitt was miscast and underdeveloped, and he reminded me too much of his role in Lock, Stock And Two Smoking Barrels.
By the way, professional critics empathized that the "Basterds" are Jewish and that the movie, therefore, was inverting the movie stereotype of portraying the Jews as sympathetic but ultimately lethargic victims. However, this isn't really the story that the movie, at least in its final cut, tells us: granted, all the Basterds are somewhat swarthy and one of them is called the "Judenbär" (Jewish bear), but their leader is a former Southern bootlegger and supposedly a gentile. Overall, and other than in the original "Bastards" movie, the background, personalities and motivations of the Basterds is mostly left in the dark. So many professional critics seem not to have watched the final release of the movie very attentively.
By far the greatest antihero of this movie is SS colonel Hans Landa, brilliantly portrayed by Christopher Waltz. He's like James Bond out to catch and kill Jews. Easily one of the evilest characters ever created by cinema, he's the Ernest Stavro Blofeld of the new millennium (or the Second World War, if you will).
The movie is an amoral, surprisingly sober roller coaster ride. I won't go into details -- it's a Pedro Almodovar-like brew of great storytelling and eccentricities mixed with Star Wars-like megalomania. But trust me, if you like Tarantino's other movies, the Basterds won't let you down.