Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds - 2009

Starring : Brad Pitt; Christopher Waltz

Genre : Historical Fantasy

Time : 153 minutes; MPAA Rating : R

Overall Rating : 5½*/10

. Led by a cowboy-sounding, Nazi-hating sergeant (Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt), a group of American mostly-Jewish commandos is wreaking havoc in WW2 German-occupied France when an opportunity arises to take out a slew of Germany's upper-echelon baddies. Including, it turns out, Hitler himself. Meanwhile, a young Jewish woman, whose family was brutally massacred by an evil Gestapo officer, is also plotting her revenge. . What's To Like... If you yearn for the return of spaghetti westerns, this will fill your bill. I could almost hear the Good-Bad-&-Ugly theme-song playing in my head during the opening act. There's lots of gore and a decent amount of action. There's no romance; this is a "Manly Man Man" movie. . The UE is the best I've seen in years. Christopher Waltz plays the shrewd, sadistic "Landa", who's earned his nickname "The Jew Hunter". He won the 2009 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, and it is well-deserved. He shines here, while Pitt is reduced to almost a cameo role. . There's also a lot of French, German, and Italian spoken in the dialogue, which means about 3/4 of the movie is subtitled. I'm used to that, and hearing full-speed French again was a treat for me. But if you don't like subtitles, YMMV. . The plot has some decent twists, including an unexpected ending. Not all the good guys live; not all the bad guys die. Finally, John Travolta isn't in the film, and that's always a plus. . So why only Five-and-a-Half Stars? This is a Quentin Tarantino film, and I am not a big fan of his. The violence is gratuitous (did I really need to see a graphic scalping?), there's too much meaningless dialogue (let's all play "Who Am I?"), the story is disjointed (although he addresses this by splitting the movie into 5 separate acts), and if the story had a message, I didn't grasp it. . Inglourious Besterds is better than QT's Pulp Fiction (one of the worst movies of all time), but not as good as his two Kill Bill flicks. The plusses pretty much balance out the minuses, and the twists and non-stereotypical characters (there are even a couple heroic Nazi soldiers) add a half-star to an average rating. It's worth watching - but only once.