What James Knows

I’m a fan of Quentin Tarantino’s work. Say what you will about the guy, but he can make one entertaining flick. Needless to say, when I first heard about Inglourious Basterds I was pretty damn excited. This was a movie that Tarantino has been talking about for years and now it finally arrived in all its Nazi killing glory. What I wasn’t expecting was a 2.5 hour long ADD-fueled pile of nonsense with no character development and lots of boring talking. It’s like Tarantino’s gigantic head exploded and what was left was an out-of-control 14 year old who loved him some Michael Bay.

According to the trailer, Basterds is about a band of elite American soldiers led by Brad Pitt to kill some Nazis with no mercy. That’s actually all I can really tell about the movie from the trailer, but hey, it’s directed by Tarantino and it looks like Pitt’s crew has really gotten Hitler’s panties in a bunch, so let’s see what kind of crazy antics and hilarious pop culture filled conversations they have along the way. Oh…You mean that’s only like 20 minutes of this whole thing? It’s how long? Two and a half hours?! What the hell fills up the rest of it? Oh, boring talking…OK. But is the talking at least about something cool like that scene in Reservoir Dogs about tipping? No? Then what happens?

Not much. Basically the whole trailer makes up most of the second chapter of the film (yes, there are chapters). The rest is basically cinematic vomit. I don’t know how else to describe it. I remember reading some time ago that Tarantino’s original vision of this film was 10 hours long. I can see how the end result would be like a 10 hour film crammed into a 2.5 hour long box. It’s tough to give a damn about any of the characters because aside from Pitt, we don’t even learn their names. B.J. Novak is in the film and he has about 2 lines throughout the entire thing. The rest of the time he just stands there looking serious while the audience goes “Hey, isn’t that the guy from The Office?”

The film is also rather sloppy and felt very amateurish. Most of the film is subtitled, which I do give Tarantino props for. It’s set in France during World War II, so most of the people are speaking French or German which fits their characters. The subtitles are inconsistent though. For well-known French words like “Oui” or “Merci” the subtitles will read either the English or French word. Yes, people say “Merci” and it actually says “Merci” on the screen. Although that only happens sometimes. Other times it will actually say “Thank you.” This just feels sloppy to me.

Another minor grievance I had with the film was a timeline. The first chapter is set in 1941 which is made clear by the large numbers on the screen. The third chapter picks up in 1944, three years later…however it says “1944. Four years after (Events of Chapter One that are not spoiled here). This wouldn’t be a problem if we didn’t know that the first chapter clearly occurred in 1941. How did no one catch this?

My major complaint about the movie though isn’t the uneven subtitles or the confusion with the dates or the lack of character development. It’s the soundtrack. Tarantino’s soundtracks are legendary. I still rock out to the Pulp Fiction soundtrack on a regular basis because it’s filled with great tunes that I would not have heard if it wasn’t for that movie. This movie’s soundtrack
does not join the ranks of the others that I must purchase after watching the film. I won’t even consider looking for a song or two. The score was easily forgettable and there wasn’t really any songs that were even worth listening to. The biggest offense though came in the fact that a few songs were obviously re-used from Kill Bill! Are you kidding me, Tarantino? Did you just phone this one in? What a letdown.

Basterds isn’t completely awful though (just mostly). The shining light of the film comes in Christoph Waltz’s performance as the slimy Col. Hans Landa. Waltz slithers his way through each aspect of the film. I found that I didn’t hate him as a character, but there was something that I just couldn’t trust about him. He was highly intelligent, conniving and manipulative and a fierce Nazi to boot. I didn’t notice this at first, but Monica pointed out afterward that with one exception, Landa doesn’t kill a single person. His hands appear to be clean for a majority of the film. However, he’s still the reason for some much death and destruction around him that he seems to be soaked in the blood of thousands.

I still can’t believe how disappointing this film was. I’m really in shock of how bad it ended up being. I thought Brad Pitt would be at least interesting to see in this role but he ended up being a horrible parody of himself by the end of the movie. The story stopped being interesting pretty quickly and honestly I could see the big finale with the Benny Hill theme playing and would not have been surprised in the slightest. It actually would have fit with the rest of the movie at that point. Now, will I pick this up on DVD? Maybe…or probably actually. I mean, if they come out with a Director’s Cut (which may or may not happen considering how we’re still waiting for The Whole Bloody Affair), I’ll check it out to at least see what the hell was supposed to happen with this mess. I probably wouldn’t watch the theatrical cut again though.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, this isn’t a historically accurate film. This is what would have happened in World War II if the story was written by a 13 year old kid with a hard-on for America.

Rating:

Tags: Inglourious Basterds, Movies, Quentin Tarantino, Review