A couple of great scenes

Rating: 7/10 (25 October 2009)

I would have loved it, if I would be able to say, that Tarantino has made a modern masterpiece with "Inglourious Basterds". It has an absolutely stunning opening scene, that introduces us Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a notorious jew hunter for the third Reich.
After that we get a much less stunning view of Aldo Reine (Brad Pitt) who is recruiting himself some volunteers to kill him some Nazis in France. It is actually from there the movie slips into a bunch of scenes of which some are less memorable than others, couple of even very good. But not only before the end do we see something that actually manages to get even close of that opening scene.
What I am trying to say is, that the movie feels more than once like a narrative mess. Sure, the vengeance story of Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) is very good, but more than once I felt like there was one story too much. Tarantino should have made a movie either about the Basterds or Shosanna. And I felt, that the story of Shosanna was the one he wanted to make, as the scenes including her overshadow almost everything the basterds are in.
Despite the narrative disagreements I have with the movie, it is beautifully shot and each frame of it looks really good. The music is okay and the actors are, with a couple of expectations, very well cast.
The movie ends in the words "This might be my masterpiece". I'm not sure if that is how Tarantino really feels, but at least I don't think it's his finest movie. An okay movie, but not a masterpiece by any means.