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Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Time Out rating

Average user rating

67 reviews

Movie review

From Time Out London

You’ve got to admire the sheer, infectious force of Quentin Tarantino’s personality. Is there any other popular American director, who, like Tarantino, is constantly ranting and raving about cinema’s glorious past and giving young filmgoers reason to extend their DVD library back beyond ‘Star Wars’? Even the name of his new film is fondly stolen from a little known Italian movie of the 1970s. It’s only when you turn to Tarantino’s own films that things get more tricky. For the sad truth is that Tarantino, like cheap wine, just isn’t improving with age.

Which is an awkward reality because Tarantino obviously wants to put away childish things with this new film. Not only does Brad Pitt close the film with the self-regarding line ‘This may well be my masterpiece’, but ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is a little more restrained and a little more quiet than films like ‘Death Proof’ and ‘Kill Bill’.

I say ‘a little’ because much of the film is not quiet at all: when the music comes, it’s loud; when the deaths occur, they’re gruesome, even sadistic; and when the plot kicks in, it’s pure, wild fantasy.

The film moves liberally between French, German and English dialogue and takes us through five chapters. First, in 1941, we see a Nazi, Colonel Hans Landa (played by Austrian Christoph Waltz), known as ‘The Jew Hunter’, discover and kill a Jewish family in France; only the youngest daughter gets away.

Then we’re introduced to the ‘basterds’, a gang of eight Jewish-American soldiers who, while deep undercover, roam Nazi-occupied France, murdering German soldiers and collecting their scalps. They’re led by a Tennessee goodtime boy, played by Pitt, but oddly they’re not on screen much. Pitt is lively but he disappears for a long time and is upstaged by Waltz, who gives a teasing turn of sly comedy and cruel charm. His scenes are the film’s best.

For the film’s final chapters, we leap to Paris in 1944, where the two stories collide. The girl who fled the Nazis, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) is now running a cinema (of course) which plays films by Riefenstahl and Pabst. A Nazi private, Frederick (Daniel Brühl), takes a shine to her. It turns out that his gun-toting heroics are being immortalised in a film produced by Goebbels, who decides that Shosanna’s cinema is perfect for the premiere. Shosanna and the ‘basterds’ decide that the screening is their chance to strike.

This might be a period movie, but still we clock Tarantino’s signature style – the extended, know-it-all dialogue, the tricky gunplay, the pop-cultural nods. There’s even a Mexican stand-off à la ‘Reservoir Dogs’ and the obligatory ‘nigger’ reference, this time in French. But this lacks the stylistic pizzazz of Tarantino’s best, and by putting more emphasis than usual on the chatter it makes it more obvious that the talk often lacks wit and verve.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Tarantino takes the history of cinema more seriously than the history of Europe. References to films abound: Michael Fassbender’s British spy (who has an amusing, if silly, ‘Dr Strangelove’-like scene with a superior played by Mike Myers) used to be a critic and regurgitates what sounds like a Wikipedia entry on German film, while another character wonders whether he prefers Chaplin or the French silent actor Max Linder.

What’s not clear is what Tarantino wants to achieve: ‘Inglourious Basterds’ is an immature work that doesn’t know whether it’s a pastiche, a spoof, a counterfactual drama, a revenge tragedy or a character comedy. How can we, within a space of minutes, feel adult sympathy for a hunted Jewish family and then childish glee when a Nazi’s skull is crushed with a baseball bat? The one cancels out the other.

But perhaps the biggest faux pas is introducing real historical characters. Tarantino’s inventions are big enough – not least Waltz’s terrific ‘movie’ Nazi – so why does he have to court implausibility by dragging in a loony Hitler (Martin Wuttke, nothing special) and introducing Goebbels? You might imagine, too, that this film was written in the ’60s: Tarantino seems blithely uninterested in more than 60 years of slow reconciliation between Europe and its past.

‘Subtle’ is not a word in Tarantino's lexicon. At the film’s heart is a fatal attempt to conflate fact with fiction and a celebration of vengeance that’s misplaced and embarrassing. Loyal fans expecting a familiar patchwork of Tarantino tics and quirks – ‘Pulp History’ or ‘Kill Hitler’ – might not be disappointed. Those expecting anything approaching progress, cinematically or ideologically, probably will be.

Author: Dave Calhoun 2009-08-18 13:07:20

Time Out London issue 2035, 20-26 August 2009

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User reviews of this film

Kieran said...

Posted on Sep 08 2009 13:06 An honest review of a disappointing film.

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Ant Man said...

Posted on Sep 07 2009 13:32 Sorry but Tarantino has produced only average films since Pulp Fiction. And this film is only just average. It's too long and wordy. And the clips make it feel like its an action packed war movie which it isn't.

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Deano said...

Posted on Sep 05 2009 22:56 Has this reviwer actaully seen the film for has he just heard what its about and decieded he doesn't like the idea of it, it is a brilliantly made film and very entertaining.

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FOC said...

Posted on Sep 05 2009 09:59 2 stars! Time out are you serious! You gave final destination 3... If you dont like the movies idea fine, but if you watched the skill set on every level in this movie is has to be worth at leat a 4 and thats without C Waltz. Has you film critic ever made a movie?

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Patrick said...

Posted on Sep 03 2009 21:43 I really enjoyed this movie. I am a big fan of Tarantino work. I loved the sceen at the end when all the scum were burned.

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Les2647 said...

Posted on Sep 02 2009 10:13 Sorry, didn't like it at all. The most boring and stupid film I have ever watched. Brad Pitt only good thing about this.

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Chris said...

Posted on Sep 01 2009 23:49 Top notch as youd expect from Tarantino, seriously, these reviewers take their jobs too seriously!

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Geee said...

Posted on Sep 01 2009 23:37 Yes Tarantino could do with someone to get him to edit out more, Yes there's some dodgy politics and yes the characters are cartoon cut outs, but it actually is great fun. Each seen is beautifully staged and choreographed. The soundtrack is playful, and there are plenty of obscure cinema reference for us movie geeks. Why do so many critics take it so seriously, go with the flow and enjoy.

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Jay said...

Posted on Sep 01 2009 14:57 'I say ‘a little’ because much of the film is not quiet at all: when the music comes, it’s loud; when the deaths occur, they’re gruesome, even sadistic; and when the plot kicks in, it’s pure, wild fantasy ' - This is the only part of the review worth reading, instead of putting me off this SOLD the film to me, saw it lastnight and loved it, Tarantino is an artistic genious. Dave Calhoun clearly misses the point of Tarantino's work, perhaps he should not reveiw what he doesnt understand

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jim the trim said...

Posted on Aug 30 2009 11:35 i thoroughly enjoyed the film, had me engrossed. no not historicaly acurate though, but the twist at the end and the mass slaughter was a good twist for those that know history, as we were waiting for the basterds to all get caught one by one, and for the war to continue. the atmospheric filming was also excellent, as were the characters and casting. a mixture of sadness humour cruelty all closely following one another was exactly what tarrantino wanted ,and he achieved that 100%

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Mr_3_7 said...

Posted on Aug 30 2009 10:50 This film may not be up to level of some of his previous production but still all of Tarantino class and style is there. All in all, a WWII set Western movie, hystorically inaccurate , so it is.
Characters are wonderfully depicted, with the possible exception of the hystorical ones; acting is on average very good, with a superb Waltz shining above everyone else. Plot is decent even though linear, with some not really convincing twists. Its weak spots are probably a cetain lack of unit and sense of flow, and the inappropriate use of quite inconsistent hystorical characters,
All of the rest is there; you got the action, the killing and the endless talking parts (please DON'T complaint about these, if you don't like them then you don't like Tarantino, and shouldn't be seeing the movie).
At least two great moments of cinema; the opening sequence in the farmer house, and the the tavern rendez-vous.
Please don't judge this movie for what is not i.e. a WWII movie.

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Bryan said...

Posted on Aug 29 2009 12:20 Sorry, this review is terrible. A reviewer who fails to grasp a film should not be writing reviews about it.
Like all QT films, this film is a many-layered work of art. If you want to see a light-hearted gorefest, watch it. If you want to see a suspenseful thriller, watch it. If you want to have a good laugh and agree that extreme violence has its place in comedy, watch it. If you want to see an art-house movie, beautifully shot with an excellent soundtrack and intelligent dialogue, dark and disturbing: watch it.
This film is many things, all of them good.

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RM said...

Posted on Aug 28 2009 18:51 Unbelievably dull. Unbelievably dire. Unlike his early greats, of which I'm a huge fan, this has no wit, little humour and the uncharacteristically linear plot pedestrian at best.
Pitt and co are underused and he provides the film#s only moment of comic relief. I want my 2 and-a-half hours back Quentin.

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Nigelbee said...

Posted on Aug 27 2009 13:35 I thought it pretty much a five star QT film. Beautifuly lit and photographed by Robert Richardson with a (believe it or not) subtle sound track full of nuance and detail. Great performances from Pitt and company and QT's great gift of writing dialogue shines through.

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Sutton said...

Posted on Aug 27 2009 13:28 I thought this was an enjoyable and humorous take on WW2 movies and would recommend it as worth a viewing. I thought all the leads were good, particularly the SS officer. Whilst IB is extremely violent in places, it is no different from the directors other films in this regard.

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