The first rule of historical fiction is...

Rating: 1/10 (30 August 2009)

Don't mess with the history. The purpose of historical fiction is to use fictional human interactions and characters to illuminate a period in time or to deliver dramatic circumstances in a historical context. PLEASE DON'T show me Hitler being killed by the resistance when he died many months later (and at the last possible moment) by his own hand, and don't show me the entire German high command being wiped out in a movie theater fire when doing so would have substantially changed the entire course of history. Remember the Nuremberg Trials? The Berlin Wall? The Eastern Block? INGLORIOUS BASTERDS commits the cardinal sin of rewriting history for no apparent purpose other than to introduce us these characters that we never really care about, and this story that doesn't really tell us anything about, well... anything. And there are no "What if..." explorations that might give us a hint as to why Tarantino drags us into this bizarre alternate universe for two and a half hours. Sparkling dialogue, some funny moments, and a truly gifted clever performance by Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa are not nearly enough to explain why Tarantino thought this story had something to tell us that made it worth rewriting history and taking up a few hundred minutes of our lives.