Better than Death Proof. But then so is every other film.

Rating: 4/10 (4 September 2009)

The problem with Inglourious Basterds is that it's rubbish. Two and a half hours of rubbish. All the ingredients are there for it to be a minor classic on the scale of, say, In Bruges, but these ingredients never add up to the correct amounts. Sure, there is humour, but it's usually incredibly obvious (yeah you, Brad Pitt.) Yes, there is violence, but much of it is reduced to gore shots so prevalent in all horror films at the moment they have no shock value. Then there's the myriad of characters who typically populate Tarantino films but who, in Inglourious Basterds, are never explored beyond a name and an accent. Finally there are the numerous homages that Tarantino shoehorns into every scene because he wants everybody to know what his influences are. However, when a homage consists of imitating Sergio Leone's extreme close up shot technique and replacing Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach with some German guy and Eli goddamn Roth, the effect is somewhat underwhelming. I mean, when you see the director of Hostel I and II emerge from a pitch black tunnel with a baseball bat in hand, ready to smash some guy's head in with it, you're not exactly thinking, "Wow, this certainly evokes the same kind of tension the original did. And the same Morricone score is being used! I may start clapping at the screen when the film ends."
Some elements do work. The chapter sequences, ripped bodily from the 120 Days of Sodom, are a nice touch. The decision to film half the scenes auf Deutsch was quite brave and far more interesting to watch than Germans speaking in English together with German accents. Tarantino's film-within-a-film, Nation's Pride, was clever as it showed what could have happened to Inglourious Basterds if he'd written it as a typical war film. The audience of Nation's Pride are entirely desensitised to the excessive violence on screen because it is occurring constantly; by contrast, when Inglourious Basterds finally erupts into a maelstrom of shooting, explosions and death, the audience greets it with repugnance. Clever, I think. Finally, the element that works the most, and furthermore almost single-handedly succeeds in overcoming the film's general disposition to be as mediocre as possible, is Christopher Waltz. Not only does he speak fluent German, English, French and Italian, but he also has a gargantuan chin. And he gave a rather puissant performance as a not very nice human being.
What I found most infuriating about Inglourious Basterds was the amount of acting talent Tarantino had to use but chose not to instead. Daniel Brühl, for instance, is relegated to the role of 'plot device.' The only character development he is given is the definitely not contrived "I seem nice, but when I don't get what I want I become a whiny bitch." Til Schweiger faces slightly different difficulties. What's the point in giving him a back-story if the back-story is going to be his only story? "Check out what this guy did! Now's he dead! Next!" Brad Pitt is also wasted. Who asked him to speak like that? Why is he in about six scenes? Not even six cool scenes, just six dull ones (cept wen hez speekin Italian amirite?!). Michael Fassbender is the other one who is criminally underused. Instead of having a revenge story about a Jew girl that nobody cares about, it would have been infinitely more beneficial to follow the exploits of Lieutenant Overtly British. On a related note, why did Tarantino feel as though he had to include Mike Myers showing off his one-note acting abilities and why have him attempting an English accent in the presence of Fassbender, whose own accent could be the archetype for all future English person impressions? Myers just looks and sounds retarded. No different than usual then. Zing.
To conclude this pointless essay, Inglourious Basterds has everything that could make a film great, but is assembled in such a way as to appear only half thought-out. As Colonel Landa says, "Wait for the cream." We're waiting. Where is it?