Typical Tarantino overwhelms World War II fantasy

Rating: 4/10 (12 August 2009)

Whenever I view a Quentin Tarantino film I expect a quirky plot, decent acting and a cool soundtrack. Unfortunately, I also expect non-existent pacing, a confusing narrative and long, drawn-out talking sequences.
You get plenty of the above with his newest effort, the revenge fantasy, "Inglourious Basterds, a remake of the 1978 Italian picture, "Bastardi Senza Gloria" (literally "Bastards Without Glory"). It's "The Dirty Dozen" meets "Valkyrie" meets "Kill Bill" and tells the story of a small band of Jewish-American guerrilla soldiers who are dropped behind enemy lines in German-occupied France and strike fear in the hearts of Hitler's military.
Led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), the group accomplishes this by raids and ambushes in which dead German soldiers are scalped (in some very gruesome scenes) and survivors have swastikas carved into their foreheads (think younger, more Teutonic versions of Charles Manson). While there are eight of these commandos, the two most interesting are Pfc. Omar "The Bear Jew" Ulmer (Omar), who beats Nazis with baseball bats; and Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), an ex-Wehrmacht soldier who killed a dozen of his own troops.
The trailers for the movie are really pushing this plot line, but that's a false premise. There are really only a few scenes of such carnage, instead the story revolves mostly around a lisping SS colonel, Hans "The Jew-Hunter" Landa (Christoph Waltz, a German actor appearing in a rare U.S. production) and a French Jew, Soshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent, a French actress appearing in a rare U.S. production), whose family Landa had killed.
She owns a movie house in Paris and becomes acquainted with Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a war hero who supposedly killed over 100 U.S. soldiers in Italy. A film of this exploit, "A Nation's Pride," was made by Nazi Minister of Propaganda, Josef Goebbels (Sylvester Groth). Of course, the premier of this film will take place at the picture show.
Also complicating matters is a British spy, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who is unintentionally hilariously briefed by Michael Myers (doing his worst Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake impersonation) and Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor, "The Time Machine," "The Birds"). Then, there's another subplot which has the Fuerher himself (Martin Wuttke) possibly attending the premier.
To complete these various story lines, Tarantino falls back on his habit of filming scene after scene of people sitting around tables, talking, talking and talking (see "Grindhouse's Death Car"). Talking in taverns, talking in houses, talking in war rooms, talking in basements, talking in prisons. Mr. Tarantino, there is a person who toils on every film set that ever existed - this person called an "editor." Please make use of this person.
These sequences swallow up about 80 percent of the movie's 2-hour, 30-minute running time and leave precious little time for Pitt, who does well, albeit with a bad Southern accent, and his mercenaries.
There some good things about the film, however. The sets and costumes are wonderful and quite accurate as far as period detail goes; the location cinematography by Robert Richardson ("The Aviator," "Kill Bill, Vols. 1 and 2") is terrific; the movie uses authentic German, French and Italian (with subtitles); and Tarrantino knows his German cinema history, dropping names like Lili Riefenstahl, P.W. Pabst and Emil Jannings.
A good surgeon could have removed about 45-minutes from this movie, though, added a few more scenes of the Basterds and toned down the David Bowie. Then, it might have been the taut, compelling film I thought it could be.