Appalling

Rating: 1/10 (4 February 2010)

I simply cannot believe this movie's current rating on IMDb.
It is currently sitting in the IMDb top 100, nestled closely with The Bridge on the River Kwai, Raging Bull and the Prestige.
To find this movie in the same standing as those three is truly staggering to me. Hence I am taking the time to give this film 1 star, to hopefully help get it down towards its rightful place among the other pieces of truly worthless cinema with which it belongs.
I can understand that this is a movie that you either love or hate - it is certainly true that it is both a provocative and original film. However, what surprises me is the massive bias towards the "love" side, given the film's content - which can be summarised as an unashamedly unrealistic and soulless collection of sadistic/casual mindless violence, strangely blended with dramatic scenes of the kind of things that genuinely took place under the Nazis.
What I am trying to say is that combining very tense, well written SS interrogation scenes (which evoke some genuine emotional investment in the film) with comic book character British generals/Nazi leaders/Jewish soldiers makes for an extremely uncomfortable combination for me. At times it feels like someone has spliced together Schindlers List with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
My best guess is that the film's originality and uncompromising approach is refreshing to people bored of the same old Hollywood formulae. Certainly the film is unpredictable. The plot (such as it is) is extremely meandering and many of the characters' actions are pretty much inexplicable. *SPOILER* (I point here towards Colonel Landa's killing of Bridget and his non-killing of Shosanna.) But then again every single character is so one dimensional that it leaves you with no idea which characters you are supposed to actually care about anyway. There is no real shock when anyone gets killed because you don't know who anyone is or what makes them tick.
Brad Pitt gets the award here for the most wooden and pointless character to appear - he is truly awful throughout the film and finds himself in a role where he does not have to portray a single emotion throughout the film. Nothing.
My final point is that originality on its own does not make a great film. Yes, Tarantino has made a movie where you see things that you have never seen before in a major Hollywood release, but that is not any sort of achievement. The reason a high budget film has not been made before where the entire German high command has a day at the cinema in occupied France with almost no guards or security is because that idea is stupid. Yes, the film is stupid - and no amount of brushing over with "Tarantino is being postmodern" or "he's being ironic" will overcome that plain fact.
In summary this is a film that takes an exploitation film script, (that would ordinarily be filed under "trash cinema") gives it a big name director/very high quality cast and then takes the plaudits for being ground breaking.
It is not. It is simply a steaming turd given a coat of gloss paint.