A slight return to form for Tarantino, but there are still problems.

Rating: 6/10 (19 March 2015)

Quentin Tarantino. While the majority of people would tell you that he is a genius filmmaker who hasn't one bad film to his name, there is a small, but vocal minority who will tell you that while he is talented, he hasn't made anything fantastic for a while. Sure, Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction are masterpieces and Jackie Brown is his most mature work, but his other work has been deeply disappointing to say the least. The Kill Bill movies were self- indulgent, badly written and overly sadistic, and Death Proof was just boring. So would Inglourious Basterds be a late return to form? Well, while good, it doesn't present Tarantino at his best, and the film is still problematic as a whole.
The story is that during their occupation of France, the Nazis premiere a propaganda film at a theater to celebrate their achievements. When this is found out, many use this as a plan to kill the Nazis once and for all, including the British army, the theater's owner Shoshanna who has a vendetta against the Nazis and a group known as the Basterds, a bunch of American Jews who have traveled to France in order to kill Nazis.
While the plot is non-linear like Tarantino's other films, it suffers from the fact that there is a lot of pointless material in the film. Many characters who have no effect on the story are killed off, some scenes go on for way too long & some of the protagonists are deeply unlikable. This mainly implies to the Basterds themselves, who despite their cause, are portrayed as sadistic psychopaths who kill and torture many Nazis, despite some of the Nazis having legitimate grievances (i.e. having a child, keeping quiet to protect their fellow men). I'm not expecting a film like this to portray Nazis with Downfall-esque sympathy, but considering that most of the Nazis in the film are shown to be more human than in other films, the constant sadism feels unnecessary, and you can't help but feel that the Basterds are no better than the Nazis themselves.
The film's sadism is a major problem. Tarantino has a weird love for extreme violence, which would be fine provided that this was a more tongue in cheek context, but considering that the movie has a mostly straight face, you can't help but feel that the movie goes too far in places. This includes cutting the scalps off Nazis, beating them to death with baseball bats, torturing an innocent witness by sticking their fingers into a bullet wound and seeing someone get strangled to death, made even more disturbing by how it is partially real (Tarantino actually strangled one of his actresses to make the film look more real). Lovely.
It's a shame that the film is bogged down by being overly long and overly sadistic, as there is some great stuff in there. As many others have pointed out, the opening scene is brilliant. Great acting, dialogue, cinematography and pacing. It's also a perfect example of how Tarantino should use his unique brand of dialogue, to be quirky and advance the story, instead of using it to ramble. It's definitely the best scene in the film, and continues 2009's tradition of having great opening scenes (i.e. Watchmen, Up) in films.
On top of this, some of the characters are very well done. Shoshanna is the best character in the film, being the most three-dimensional and interesting, and her story arc in the film is the most compelling because of it, essentially being the brilliant female revenge story that Kill Bill should have been. You just wish the whole movie was focused on her, but still, her scenes are where the film reaches its peak, and Melanie Laurent delivers one of the best (and sadly underrated) performances in recent memory. It's also a very well- made film. The cinematography is gorgeous, the sets and production design are well done, and the acting is very good from everybody, even though I feel that some are wasted, mainly that of Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz, the latter of whom does the absolute best with a weak character. If you want to see him at his best, watch The Zero Theorem instead.
It's because of these things that I feel that while Inglourious Basterds is a slight return to form for Tarantino, it's still dragged down by many of Tarantino's usual faults. From the overly sadistic violence of the film, to the overlong running time, to the self-indulgent touches to the film (i.e. having a Mike Myers cameo, or Samuel L. Jackson as a narrator, clearly his easiest paycheck yet), the film's positive attributes, while present, are still balanced out by the film's many faults. It's definitely a step forward, but there's still some work to be done.