Print Page - Film Review: Inglourius Basterds

There aren't many films I take a dislike to the moment the opening titles start running but I'm afraid this was one of them. There was a strong smell of spaghetti western about this film right from the off. OK that might be considered part of Tarantino's style but it seemed to work in his previous films but definitely didn't in this one.
The opening scene was meant to be in occupied France during the second world war but the spaghetti western soundtrack in the background and the actor's clothing just said cowboys and injuns to me and the whole scene came across as incongruous, confusing and offputting.

This opening scene was closely followed by a long, long interminably boring scene with a German officer talking to a farmer. The pace of this film can only be described as leisurely and to my mind is a prime example of a director being given too much money to make a film. If Tarrantino had been given half the budget he actually had the film would have been better. Not good, but shorter - which in this case could only have been better.

The basic plot of the film is that a group of Americans are sent into occupied France to kill 'Nazis'. They do this by committing all kinds of atrocities. Naturally, being Tarrantino these atrocities are shown in graphic detail. You would expect plenty of blood and guts with Tarrantino but after a while I did get the feeling that he was sprinkling gory scenes through the film just to shock the audience and that they didn't advance the plot at all. For example when a woman was getting an injection from a doctor we are treated to an extreme closeup shot of the needle going into her arm. Totally unnecessary and gratuitous and to be honest a little juvenile.

The 'hero' of the film was the American officer played by Brad Pitt. This was a totally unlikeable character whose only positive attribute was that we didn't actually see as much of him during the film as you might expect, being the lead. Pitt may have been handicapped by the writing of the character but it wasn't his finest performance ever. As the leader of the supposedly 'good guys' battling the Nazis it did occur to me by the end of the film that the worst 'Nazi' in the film was in fact the American officer played by Pitt, torturing and maiming people in the name of 'democracy'.

Overall if I'd gone to see this film without knowing Tarrantino had directed it I would have assumed that it had been made by a first year student at film school doing a not very good pastiche of Tarrantino's work. At the end I wasn't sure whether this was meant to be a send-up of the war film genre or whether it was a fantasy very, very, very loosely based on historical facts. I'm not sure the director knew what kind of film he was meant to be making either. Whatever kind of film it's meant to be, it just doesn't work. This isn't the worst film I've ever seen but it really isn't very good.

Geoff

I bought it a recommendation (by some one who hadn`t actually seen it) He had seen Jonathon Ross and Quentin Tarantino talking about it and Ross requested you go out and buy it.

Anyway i stuck it out for about half an hour or more ,till finally i just had to switch it off . IT WAS GARBAGE !

The acting was amateurish, the scenery was unrealistic for where it was "supposed" to be depicitating ,and the plot was pathetic. All in all, I`d rate it as the worst war film i`ve ever watched . And i`ve watched a few bad ones.
If that`s the best what Tarantino can do , why is he hailed as a good film producer ?

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Films, DVDs & TV Programmes => Films & DVDs on Other Subjects => Topic started by: proconsul on August 20, 2009, 04:25:53 PM