Tarantino Film Violence Loses Sting Without Moral Edge

Rating: 6/10 (25 August 2009)

The first scene in the film, sets a very high standard. At bottom though, Inglourious Basterds is just a new, highly stylized exploitation film. Its most troubling aspect is that it is an equal opportunity exploitation film: both the Nazis and the Americans are a bunch of cruel brigands. The Americans, led by Brad Pitt, take scalps from dead Nazis. Tarantino the storyteller doesn't root for either side. Both Americans and Nazis are treated as the same sorts of menacing caricatures. Tarantino is capable of making a very good serious movie. So why doesn't he make one of those? Hitler, in this telling, is as absurd a caricature as Mel Brooks' stage Hitler(comedian Dick Shawn) was in the original Producers. I have seen the guy playing Tarantino's Hitler in the role before. The actor was carefully selected to be a Hitler who looks almost exactly like Shemp Howard, brother to Mo, and occasional substitute in Three Stooges comedies. Tarantino even stole some particularly absurd lines from the original Producers to put in Hitler's mouth. The film is stagy, self congratulatory and self conscious. It moves at a snails pace, wandering somewhere between a savagely ironic comedy and an over the top, bashing male thriller. But it is neither. Tarantino is toying with film genres here in a way that is unsatisfying for fans of both. Without a moral compass, Inglourious Basterds is an overly long picture that doesn't stir enough audience passion.