Inglourious Basterds

I've always liked Quentin Tarantino. Say what you want about the guys style, he has a unique voice and always tries to do something interesting with whatever genre he happens to be working with whether it be a hong kong martial arts epic, a seventies style blacksploitation, or in this case a WWII film. Inglourious Basterds exhibits all of his stylistic trademarks (dialougue heavy scenes, chapter titles, and obscure cultural references) to great effect (which if you don't like Tarantino may be a bad thing) and is in general a highly entertaining movie going experience. That said I have a few thoughts:

1) The film is really extremely well cast. I'm repeating other reviews here but Christoph Walz and Melanie Laurent are particularly good as, respectively, the nazi 'Jew Hunter' and escaped jewess seeking revenge. I even enjoyed Brad Pitt's Tennessee-bred Nazi hunter who leads the squad of Basterds (his utterly ridiculous porn mustache certainly helped).

2) One of the reasons I enjoy Quentin's films is that, much like Woody Allen, he seems to revel in the spoken word. The film itself is incredibly dialogue heavy with relatively little action (especially considering its a war film featuring a nazi scalping band of American soldiers) with most of the considerable tension being generated from conversations between characters. The opening scene in particular, featuring Walz's character questioning a french farmer he suspects of harboring jews, is a master class in the slow burn and runs for a good 25 minutes during which at no point did I feel anything but increasing tension.

3) The film is incredibly entertaining, but it doesn't quite reach the level of Tarantino's best work (Kill Bill, Jackie Brown, etc). It is a bit disjointed and goes a bit crazy at the end, but the real thing holding it back is the fact that all the characters are really just sociopaths to one degree or another. Incredibly entertaining sociopaths to be sure, but sociopaths none the less. This kept me from becoming emotionally invested and as a result I didn't feel the intended impact of the climax.

4) That said Quentin pretty much throws any attempt at historical accuracy out the window and gives us the WWII he wants...and that's fine. In some ways its like Rambo II where stallone goes back and essentially re-fights the Vietnam War except it has style and is actually, you know, good. The ending goes completely insane (not necessarily a bad thing) and the film could probably stand to have dropped 15 minutes, but those are quibbles. Its still one of the most satisfying film going experiences I've had this year and I look froward to what Tarantino does next.