Contemptible and awful beyond belief - America's descent into barbarism continues

Rating: 1/10 (15 March 2010)

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS IN HERE.
I finally broke down and watched this train wreck of a movie after the obviously rigged Oscars, out of a morbid curiosity as to why Christoph Waltz won an award over what should have been a clearly superior performance by Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy in a clearly superior movie. After all, it doesn't take great acting ability to play a Nazi. just the right uniform and with his accent, Waltz is already at least half way there. He has a long future ahead of him recycling old Conrad Veidt roles (that Veidt did so much better 60 years ago).
Yes, I held my nose and watched this "movie". Although I do think Tarentino has made some great (and violent) movies such as "Pulp Fiction" and "Kill Bill 1&2" in the past, this one absolutely reeks like rotting vegetation in a methane swamp. "Inglourious Basterds" has literally no saving merit or grace whatsoever, except possibly cinematography. The story line is ridiculous, the script is poorly written and makes little sense, the dialogue is achingly boring and pointless, the performances collectively are as wooden as Pinocchio's nuts. In a movie, the scenes are supposed to have a point and move the plot forward, but apparently Tarentino has progressed beyond either plots or points in his film-making as most of the scenes were endless and didn't flow into each other as much as collide. I honestly cannot find a single thing to recommend in this movie - the characters were so badly written and acted that I cannot comprehend how anyone could remotely care about them other than to feel some sense of relief when they died some horrible death and were thereby removed from the screen.
The worst part of the movie however, is the emphasis upon torture, and it is THIS, that reveals the great moral and ethical (as well as artistic) decline of America. I have known Holocaust survivors and their families, and have read of others, and I have NEVER heard or read of any of them supporting the use of torture, against even the fiendish Nazis. People who endured the horrors they did, were consumed not with a desire for a brutal revenge, but a desire for life and to build a better society, and Israel, for one thing, is the result of that desire for a wholesome life, and a belief in the future that ultimately was stronger than the Nazi cult of death.
Actions like scalping prisoners of war, beating them to death with baseball bats, sticking fingers in a woman's gunshot wounds - these are all CONTEMPTIBLE and anyone who would support or encourage such practices, even against those who are evil, is CONTEMPTIBLE. When people engage in degrading practices, they inevitably become degraded themselves, and that such activity would not only be shown on a screen, but APPLAUDED, or at best, overlooked, by an audience or reviewers, is a grave sign of moral and ethical collapse. Our WW2 soldiers did not do such horrible things, and any who might have would have been severely punished in a society that, unlike ours, still had standards of behavior, even in wartime. That was what distinguished us from the barbarism and brutality of the Germans and Japanese in WW2. Now, however, we glorify it on the screen in the name of a revenge fantasy. What's next - ripping out people's entrails? Feeding them to wild beasts? Where does this end?
When you watch this garbage, what you are ultimately doing is POISONING YOUR OWN MIND AND CHARACTER. This isn't just "fun", it becomes part of who you are and what you think and are willing to accept.
We have had a plethora in the past 10 years or so of movies that feature what I would call torture porn, such as the "Saw" series, and it is only a degraded and barbarous audience that would watch this dehumanizing garbage. These are the same degenerates who applaud waterboarding and other forms of torture because they have fallen into a moral abyss and don't even realize how far they have declined. "Inglorious Basterds" is INDEED inglorious and reflects the shame of a nation.
If you want to see a well written, sophisticated, thinking, well acted, uplifting movie about World War 2, go back to "Casablanca" which was actually created during a generation that actually FOUGHT a war against the Nazis - and won - instead of creating sadistic fantasies about it. Then tell me why the two should be ranked in the same league. Of if you want something bloodier - take a look at the original "The Dirty Dozen" that Tarentino ripped off to make this abortion. "The Dirty Dozen" had the same basic plot of an officer building an elite force to take on a mission to kill the top Nazi brass, but did it in a way to make you interested in the characters and care about their mission. The great irony about "Inglourious Basterds" is that ultimately the most sympathetic characters in the movie... became the Nazis who were tortured and murdered. Was that really the intent?