OldSchoolStylee

I've read and heard praise for this film and the only reason for this I can think of is that there is a different version of the film that everyone else has seen that I haven't.

The whole thing is a complete masturbatory self-indulgent load of twaddle.

First and foremost: Two and a half hours. 150 minutes. 150 minutes of which I felt every single one as though gaseous valium was being pumped into the cinema. A good hour easily could be chopped from this film. So much of the dialogue is completely redundant and lacks any sort of spark or charisma as was present in say Pulp Fiction.

Case in point with this is an incredibly long and boring scene in a basement bar in which a car dguessing game is played. This scene develops over approximately 3 weeks during which time incredibly languorous dialogue is bumbled over without any sense of direction or creation of tension as this particular scene warrants until everyone in the bar is killed (spoiler warning: everyone in the bar is killed). So we have a 40 minute scene based around charecterisation of charecters who will soon be dead so one small plot point can be carried forwards.

Fuck me, whole scenes could have been removed especially an awful piece of bumf with Mike Myers doing a "funny" (read:wacky) british general delivering unsubtle exposition to Michael Fassbender's character in front of Winston Churchill. This whole bit could have been cut completley were it not for two things:

1)This scene allows Tarantino to insert as many obscure film references (and film industry references) as possible in order to prove that he is lord of the films or at least he would be if he didn't produce crap like this. Actually now that I think about it I don't think Tarantino has an idea of what "cool" is since so much of his atmosphere setting is lifted whole sale from other films. Nerdy film references and comedy wigs are not cool Quentin.

2)It gives the opportunity for some of the worst comedy lines ever heard in any film ever which is this film is a worryingly common opportunity.

The film just bounces from style to style with no sense of cohesion (much like that paragraph link). You've got gritty WW2 film leading into blaxpoitation character introductions (done quite bizzarely by Samuel L Jackson) leading into 1920 Parisian film school going into Weimar Germany style and finally some of the most overtly pornographic violence that has ever been committed to celluloid.

These jarring juxtapositions of style fit quite neatly with the plot which although consists of scenes lasting epochs never allows for any attachment to be created. I seriously believe that you could edit this film into two different films and you would not know any difference.

Which brings me neatly onto my next point; the Basterds themselves. For how much they appeared in the hype they sure were reclusive. Fuck me I think that they were on screen as a unit for possibly 15 minutes.

I've just remembered another complaint I have: if you are going to work up to a huge conclusion to which we have been waiting through long scene after long scene for, do not (under pain of death) try to fit all of the action into ten minutes. I think I might have seen all of the action in the trailers anyway considering that placed up against the Parisian movie theatre stoyline probaly accounted for 3% of this film.

I've heard Brad Pitt's performance praised. I guess comedy accents are in this year.

Redeeming features:

The only performance worth praising is that of Christoph Waltz as Col. Hans Landa who completely decimates anyone else he is put up against, easily steals every scene and stole my heart. It is often that I find myself rooting for the Nazis but I certainly was when he strangles Bridget von Hammersmark to death although that may have purely been because it was one fewer character remianing.

The opening scene is absolutely amazing and to sully it with my mere words in a review which mentions all the other tripe that this film makes us sit through would be unfair.

Language is used very well with subtitles and the different accents differentiating between them. This leads to the closest thing resembling tension being created with certain people unable to understand others blah blahb lah.

Overall: This film vies with Transformers 2 for the worst film I have seen this year. It certainly is the most boring film I have seen in a long long long time. It was like watching paint dry except that that would have had a better conclusion and Tarantino needs to realise that no one but him finds his Aperger's like knowledge of obscure films interesting.

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