Inglourious Basterds

• Director: Quentin Tarantino
• Writer: Quentin Tarantino
• Cast: Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Samm Levine, B.J. Novak
• Theatrical Release Date: August 21, 2009
• Distributor: Weinstein Co.
• Criticwire: B+
• On The Web Film WebsiteIMDB Entry

Synopsis: "Inglourious Basterds" begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as "The Basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquee, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own. [Synopsis courtesy of the Weinstein Co. and Universal Pictures]

Round-up: "Given what the world expects from Quentin Tarantino - the man, the myth, the pastiche-driven movie machine - his latest feature, 'Inglourious Basterds,' stands out for its seemingly low ambition," reports critic Eric Kohn for indieWIRE, going on to say that "The story of Nazi-hunting Jewish soldiers delivers on the colorful brand of unserious entertainment implied by the plot, but no matter how much extreme contextualization and heavily stylized techniques Tarantino introduced to the production, 'Inglorious Basterds' feels like a bubblegum sidedish to the heavy dinner plate of his career. While not intentionally a rudimentary project, it automatically becomes one by the limits of its design." Most critics, it seems, share Kohn's sense of disappointment with "Basterds" which doesn't, in their view, quite match the director's best work. "The film is by no means terrible but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long
 stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized 
characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing," says The Hollywood Reporter's review. "Terrible" would seem to be The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw's assessment of the film, however. In his one-star review he rants: "Quentin Tarantino's cod-WW2 shlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious. It isn't funny; it isn't exciting; it isn't a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn't emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that." Finally, a more mixed appraisal of the film comes courtesy of Dave Calhoun writing for Time Out. He writes that while "Tarantino is mostly smart enough to let his usual, entertaining extravagances serve the story rather than the other way around... For all its shallow pleasures, there’s no getting away from the troubling theme of sadistic revenge at the heart of 'Inglourious Basterds', a theme that’s hard to take seriously in such a movie, about such a period of history."