Movie Review, "Inglourious Basterds"

By Christian Toto http://www.whatwouldtotowatch.com/

It’s getting more and more likely we’ll never get another “Pulp Fiction” from Quentin Tarantino.

The hyper-gifted auteur, who can embrace and implode genre conventions with ease, simply lacks the discipline to corral his out-sized talents.

“Inglourious Basterds,” oh, so loosely based on the 1977 Italian actioner, is merely the latest proof. It’s an alternately brilliant and baffling World War II fantasy marked by boilerplate Tarantino excess.

You’ll swear one scene in particular runs for at least a half hour, and how can any film’s dramatic momentum survive such a detour?

“Basterds” ostensibly follows a group of Jewish Nazi hunters led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt speaking in a southern fried twang).

But the movie opens with the sequence which puts all of Tarantino’s skills on technicolor display.

An SS officer (Christoph Waltz) is interrogating a dairy farmer to see if he’s hiding any Jews in his home. Waltz announces a star is born with his first few line readings, bringing a coiled ruthlessness to the role few actors could mimic. Tarantino does the rest, expertly building tension that’s almost too draining to endure.

Then we meet the Basterds, a group of vengeance-seeking Jews out to collect as many Nazi scalps - literally - as they can.

But that’s only part of the story Tarantino wants to tell. We also meet a Jewish theater owner (Melanie Laurent) planning to draw as many Nazis into her movie house as possible so she can bring it down around them.

Add a beautiful actress (Diane Kruger) also working for the Allied forces and you have a gaggle of intriguing characters within a fantastical Nazi setting.

Action junkies will be sorely tested by Tarantino’s inability to reign in his dialogue, much of it sharper than what he punished us with in “Death Proof.” Yes, some scalps get detached, but the bulk of “Basterds” involves Nazis trying to get our heroes to fess up about one plot or another.

It’s a device that quickly grows stale, even if it’s suffused with occasionally sharp dialogue. That means you’ll initially be drawn in and, soon after, yawning while glancing at your watch. It’s hard to remember why we should care about the various characters here when so much time goes by without them on screen.

Pitt’s first scene makes it feel as if he’s wiping the slate clean on every role he played before meeting Tarantino. Soon his southern tics become just that, an actorly card game fooling no one.

By the final scene he’s become a caricature of himself.

The film’s score isn’t a pastiche of priceless pop ditties but a puree of scores from past war movies. Naturally, the musical bed is one of the film’s strengths, and Tarantino’s ear has never been in question.

His reliance on pulpy elements, like having Samuel L. Jackson serve up some pointless narration and identifying specific Nazi leaders with on-screen shout outs, doesn’t fit the overall mood.

“Inglourious Basterds” clearly needs a thorough editing, an outside visionary who can distill Tarantino’s best instincts and bring some snap back to his narratives.