It took me two and a half viewings to realize that after all, I did enjoy the Inglourious Basterds; the experience was just muddled by some requisite qualifications. This is not the QT’s finest hour, though it does follow the path he’s always followed, which was made most obvious in his most finest hour with the first half of Kill Bill. Indeed what worked so beautifully in the Kill Bill saga begins to fall apart here, so this is one of those cases where it’s a swing and a miss, but it’s a hefty swing.

The genre filmmakers to look out for nowadays seem to dabble in making movies paying homage to the flicks they grew up with – you know, your Eli Roths and Robert Rodriguez’s, even Edgar Wright and Takashi Miike – and leading them is Tarantino. By this time we could judge what Tarantino’s favorite genres are by just reviewing his small but impressive filmography, and note that western is high up there. There are moments in Basterds that feel downright Leone (or possibly Corbucci, but I suppose we’ll see that in Django Unchained), and these are the moments that work the best.

 

Otherwise you can break the movie down into a few pieces: tense dialogues, lighthearted dialogues, and really boring bits that seem to do nothing. Practically every moment with the character Shoshanna was unmemorable and really rather dull to me; I didn’t care for this character when she’s so obviously standing in the shadow of a tried and true archetype – the squad. The titular Basterds are The Dirty Dozen, are the Inglorious Bastards, are every men-on-a-mission movie men on a mission we’ve ever seen. When they’re on-screen, the movie actually comes across as more of a western, and this is hugely entertaining. When Shoshanna is on-screen, she’s usually just plotting, and this is so goddamn boring.

The best that this movie can be is entertaining, and I suppose that’s just what Tarantino set out to do with this one. Whereas legitimate themes could be extrapolated out of Death Proof, I feel that Tarantino wasn’t trying to say much here. Rather, he crafts an intricate escapist fantasy where Hitler was brutally murdered by Jewish soldiers, and everything is just like it was in the movies.

 

 

The genre-mixing and film-within-a-film are what pay homage to earlier movies, and it sets up this fantasy world where the one goal is entertainment. And it is entertaining – people don’t make movies like this, QT is one of a kind and I’m thankful for his cinematic contributions. When the movie slows down and gets involved with its characters, who by purpose must be archetypes, I too slow down and check my watch.

Unfortunately for Inglourious Basterds the movie also just made me wish Tarantino had done a straight western, and nix the war setting altogether. Even if he didn’t, he really should’ve called the movie Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France. Bit of a mouthful, but the joke would’ve landed better.

 

Quentin Tarantino. At this point I’d say he’s infamous – after his involvement with Grindhouse and the completion of his two-part magnum opus, people began to look back on his older stuff and realize that he’s been doing the same thing the whole time; he never changed. Reservoir Dogs was an homage to movies of its ilk, and Pulp Fiction was a melting pot of just about everything. Maybe people think he’s a one trick pony because this is all he does, on top of writing cute dialogue, but hey as long as he’s the only one doing it – or the only getting it right – I’ll eagerly await the releases of his future projects.