Interesting but very far from Tarantino's best

Rating: 7/10 (9 October 2009)

I am a big fan of director Quentin Tarantino's work, but I took a huge disappointment with Death Proof, at the same time it made me see that Tarantino was not infallible as I thought he was before watching that film.Death Proof had been full of loooooong and horribly tedious sequences which had insipid dialogs and which did not lead anywhere.I found Tarantino's indulgence on that film to be unforgiven, because his obsession for making a tribute to the 70's cinema took preponderance over the narrative and his usually clear vision.
So, because of that, I had a bit of distrust before watching Inglourious Basterds, another tribute to a genre ("Nazi exploitation") which was popular on previous decades but which was extinguished over the time for finally becoming into a historical curiosity, and whose films are more interesting for their anachronism than for their intrinsic quality.And although I enjoyed many "Nazi exploitation" films, I did not think they are worthy of a rebirth.
At least that was my perception before watching the film.After having seen it, I noticed that Tarantino's intention was showing two facets which coexist on the same movie; on the one hand, he wanted to make a cathartic film with plentiful violence and action; and on the other hand, he wanted to make a sober drama about the ideological conflict behind World War II.I think those two facets are not very well balanced, but they help to each other for finally creating an interesting and entertaining experience, but which is not very memorable after all.
I will start with the complains I have with this movie.First of all, I think Tarantino urgently needs an editor or producer who can instill some narrative discipline on him.Tarantino has always been interested in creating juicy conversations, but he exceeded a little bit on that in Inglorious Basterds (although not as much as in Death Proof), at the same time that makes him loose the narrative focus on a few occasions.That was definitely an obstacle I had to completely plunge myself on an interesting story.
Besides, I do not think the story was completely well planned; I think that the elements of action and violence were the least lucky from the movie, and that includes the "basterds" from the title.And finally, I did not find Brad Pitt to be completely credible on his role.I consider him to be a great actor, but he honestly irritated me a little bit in here.
Fortunately, Inglourious Basterds has various positive elements, so I finished liking it after all.The best element from this movie is the aspect of the espionage and conspiracy from the Resistance, thanks to Tarantino's solid direction and the excellent performances from a group of European actors, where the members who mostly stand out are Mélanie Laurent and Christoph Waltz.
So, in spite of its various fails, I liked Inglourious Basterds and I can recommend it as an interesting movie.It is definitely an enormous step forward of Death Proof, but it is very far from reaching the heights of Tarantino's best movies (Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown, by my humble point of view).Clearly, Inglorious Basterds is one of his least achieved movies, but it entertained me anyway.