Ok, by now the mainstream press and the hip sites like AintitCool have done their usual fellating of Mr. Taratino’s latest opus. He’s being hailed worldwide for a revisionist masterpiece. The only problem? It simply isn’t so.
Tarantino has made a career out of mashing up different film styles and paying homage to different genres, usually sprinkling them with moments of great dialogue (the scene with Dennis Hopper and Christopher Walken in True Romance) or blindingly well done action or tension sequences (the restaurant fight in Kill Bill vol.1). Usually this works for him, producing movies you can’t pull yourself away from. In this case, however, that doesn’t happen.
If everything you saw in the trailer was true, Basterds would be a rip roaring action revenge film about an Allied captain (Brad Pitt) who leads an underground cell of Jewish soldiers on a ultraviolent crusade through occupied France, culminating in a final revenge against the Nazi leadership in a theatre. The rub is that this only takes up about a half hour out of a two and a half hour movie.
The rest of the movie concerns an escaped Jewish girl (Melanie Laurent) who is now the owner of a movie theatre in Paris. Surrounded by the enemy, she’s forced to show the latest opus of the Third Reich, based on a real life massacre by the star of the movie (Daniel Bruhl). Said star has a crush on her, and thus she’s faced with having to be nice to him while plotting his demise. She also has scenes with the man who has to Tarantino’s best find of the decade, Christopher Waltz as Col. Landa.
Much has been made of Waltz’s performance, and it’s the one point most of my brethren in the press have right. From the opening, when he’s interrogating a French farmer about hiding Jews, to the end where he’s negotiating with Brad Pitt’s character to be taken to the Allies, he steals every scene he’s in. If he doesn’t get an Oscar nod (especially with the new rules for more nominees) it’ll be a travesty.
So, what makes this so much less of a regular Tarantino film? It’s too damn long. It’s the only Tarantino film close to three hours, and it shows. There’s an entire subplot involving a British film critic that appears to be nothing but an excuse for Mike Myers to get some street cred after the disaster that was Love Guru. This makes twice in a year that Meyer owes the world an apology for wasting our time. Quit screwing around and make the Sprockets movie while synth bands are in style again! Also, someone needs to explain why Eli Roth is claiming a starring role when he’s on screen for less than ten minutes. And let me tell you, he’s bad in those ten minutes, with a worse accent than Tim Curry in Congo.
So why all the love for a subpar Tarantino film? Because a subpar Tarantino film usually has enough good dialogue to make your head split. That isn’t the case in this one, where most of the good dialogue showed up in the trailer. Plus, Tarantino has lived every film critic’s wet dream; coming up from a sucky job (video clerk) to Oscar winner, thus ensuring Blockbuster will have employees for decades.
In the end, Inglorious Basterds is a good film, but not up to the usual level of Tarantino’s work. It’s too long and far too often actionless. Tarantino is good at ratcheting up tension for the minute jolts, but not drawn out sequences. But this is still worth seeing, so wait for video, where you can pause in between dialogue spews.
Final Verdict (out of 5):
with Pulp Fiction being a 5
