Inglourious Basterds film review: gimmicky bastardry
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So this is what happens when Tarantino broaches history. In a berserk and shameless slice of delirious historical fiction – a signature QT wet dream punctuated by long derivative conversations and sharp lashings of violence – the ever-audacious ever-loquacious auteur presents an alternate version of WWII in which a group of elite macho killers scotched Germany’s chances of winning the war one Nazi scalp at a time.
Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is leader of the Basterds, who improbably survive for years in France, enjoying – and I do mean enjoying – a rampant killing season with the ultimate intention of finding Hitler and sending him to hell. The premise sounds action-packed but it’s mostly hot air and yackety-yak. Much of the dialogue is subtitled, which dilutes the writer/director’s slashing repartees and whiplashed words into something more contrived and far less arresting. Thus in Inglourious Basterds Tarantino’s fiery grasp of language is largely lost.
QT is many things to many people but boring should not compute; how unfortunate then that much of the film consists of waffling circumlocutory word slabs carried by a fickle up-n-down pace that at times roars along with frenetic hell-for-leather speed and at others is dragged and padded out to a slow and lumpy moil. A card playing sequence involving a Basterds double agent is excruciatingly long and tedious, the kind of scene conducive to extended editions or DVD extras but here, making the final cut, it inflicts substantial damage to the pace and rhythm of the story and the patience and goodwill of audiences. The film’s ending, an explosive confection of shock, violence and intoxicating historical revisionism, is set at a movie premiere attended by Hitler and his minions. It’s a blistering hoot, a beefy vomit in the face of good taste that damn near makes up for all the film’s slow spots.
Christoph Waltz is a great as a maligning cucumber-cool Nazi Col. Hans Landa (aka The Jew Hunter). It’s a role that would have suited the late David Carradine to a tee, and Waltz’s screen presence – he wisely handles QT’s writing with a slowly unwinding, sinister playfulness – is alone almost worth the price of admission.
Basterds has compelling moments but is a strange and inconsistent beast, a frothy high-handed experiment constrained, like the first Kill Bill movie, by Tarantino’s tendency to slip into gimmick mode. It feels very much like a grab bag of novelties: the concept, characters, locations and even the use of subtitles like amusements in QT’s why-not? playground of stylistic quirks and contrivances. Some of them impress, others don’t. Behind the gimcracks and gewgaws there is the skeleton of a rip-snorting classic here – we didn’t get it, no sir no how, but at times Tarantino comes close.
Inglourious Basterds’ Australian theatrical release: August 20, 2009.
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I agree with you overall, but feel compelled to comment on the sound
because it’s rarely done so well. If people manage to get their heads
around the concept of a blind person going to movies, the next question is
often how I manage with subtitles. My usual answer is that I don’t, but
it’s more than possible in IB. And the reason for that is QT’s incredible
talent for fleshing out every aspect of atmosphere without overdoing it.
So the sound is truly first class.
I thought Inglourious Basterds was great fun. Very stylized and very ‘Tarantino.’ I accept that the card scene went on for a little too long, but I wouldn’t call it excruciatingly tedious.
And there I was thinking that the card scene was a highlight of the film. The tension was excruciating, increasing all the while as the scene went on, while I was dying to see how it would play out. As happened in the opening scene with Hans Landa and the farmer, and again between Landa and Shosanna at the restaurant (“a glass of milk for the lady”…ouch!).
Perhaps Luke’s attention span is a little bit short, or he was expecting more Pulp Fiction?
personally I think “Jackie Brown” was Tarantino’s masterpiece – it actually had great heart and soul. Many have not seen it, it wasn’t particularly successful at the box office or critically as far as I know.
I still watch and enjoy everything he does though – always worth watching. Haven’t seen IB yet.
I was bowled over by Basterds when I saw QT introduce it at the MIFF, but then began to question whether I’d simply been so impressed by the fact it managed to so wholly surprise me. I went and caught it a second time over the weekend. Loved it all over again. Stands as one of my absolute favourite major releases this year. I’ll certainly concede it’s not made of the same stuff as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction or Jackie Brown. But this to me feels like a grand studio film delivered by the man behind those three modern wonders, and as deliriously out-there as it gets come that finale, I found Basterds an impressively focused whole in which QT was able to indulge all of his typical preoccupations (the cinephilia; the love of near-but-not-quite-larger-than-life characters/performances; the extended and unbearably tense conversational exchanges; the thematic concerns of revenge and the brassy femmes who serve it blazing hot) with an engine of genuine purpose firing them forward. I understand that the tone varies and the film unfolds at its own leisurely measure, but, personally, I didn’t find that cause for complaint here. Basterds is a movie with a big, bold capital ‘M’ of a kind I’d not been expecting. Loved it
Meanwhile, remember when Leonardo DiCaprio was apparently in the running for Landa? I do love the Leo, but boy am I glad that never came to pass…
Worst movie I have ever seen. I am a huge fan of Tarantino but he appears to be suffering from some kind of premature dementure. He recently attacked an innocent photographer in a 7/11 in the states.
my god i think most of the posts here are from 12 year old boys.lol.
My son and I (me 50, my son 20) love the movies and go to a different screening every week, when I heard a new QT movie was at the theater I beg my son and a sured him that “its a Quintin Tarantino Movie”!
And that its was going to be the “Poo” Gratuitous Sex and violence! etc.
Was I made a fool of… I sat there with baited breath waiting and waiting for some sort of signature event of QT’s and was bitterly disappointed (my son fell asleep).
Apart from an SBS style subtitled Movie from the beginning till the end. There was a lack of action that is the norm in a QT Movie. QT had all the perfect cast of actors to lure you in but a lack of action (only the last 5 minutes) the movie was a waste of $30. QT should go back to renting Video at the shop where he started….
I’ll pass next time on a QT movie…. I feel sorry for Diane Kruger as She is a brilliant
actress.
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