Mild disappointment

To criticise Quentin Tarantino, a walking legend of the cinema, is probably beyond most of his aficionados' comprehension and power, but his latest film fantasy, which takes us back to the times of the World War II into Nazi-occupied France, deserves a degree of reservation.

Inglorious Basterds is far from original in its storyline, with alternative scenarios for the Nazi domination of Europe in abundance in literature and film. True, there is this imaginative Jewish revenge commando, taking justice in their violent hands and symbolically making up for the passivity of the Holocaust victims. That's a fairly new concept, if you take out Defiance with Daniel Craig, in particular at the hands of Tarantino's wild imagination.

I also get the feeling Tarantino got stuck in the revenge rut, most of his other films, e.g. Kill Bill or Death Proof, driven by vendetta and vindicating the rights of the oppressed, turning the victimhood upside down. On top of that, violence, for which Quentin is notorious, keeps annoying here, although the times admittedly justify it, but it would be great to see Tarantino make his film around other techniques once.

What I liked, on the other hand, was acting, especially Christoph Waltz in the hysterical role of a cruel and cunning Col. Hans Linda, brilliantly switching between languages and using his extraordinary intelligence to track down his Jewish victims. Playing a wide array of moods, from a concerned, apparently slow-minded interviewer in the opening scene, which ends in the slaughter of the hiding Dreyfus family, to a fanatical, dominating Goebells security chief, to a foreseeing end-of-war surrender-seeker. Brad Pitt, speaking rough heavily-accented Italian and acting on a simple redneck logic of cruel revenge, is another marvel to watch.

Other than that it's languages in the film that made it a real pleasure for me to watch, with French, English and German in practically equal proportions, sprinkled with a tad of Italian, not a usual feature of a Hollywood production.

Some favourable and unfavourable reviews here, here and here and here.