You Basterds

This afternoon, I went to check out Quentin Tarantino's latest, Inglourious Basterds. It's a fantastical World War II story about a plot to assassinate several Nazi leaders as they attend the premiere of a propaganda film in occupied France.

It's also thoroughly classic Tarantino, so if you like his sort of film, you'll want to get out immediately and see this (if you haven't already). If, like me, you're less enthusiastic about his work, then... well, to make a long story short, this is still probably one worth seeing.

But I do mean "make a long story short." This is a long, long story, clocking in at two-and-a-half hours. And it's not long for any particularly good reason. Like Kill Bill, this is a pretty straight vengeance story that shouldn't take so damn much film to tell. And like Kill Bill, Tarantino seems to be too much in love with the sound of his own voice -- as it issues from the mouths of his characters -- to let it be that simple.

There are many good sequences throughout the film, both action beats and quieter moments. But just when the momentum gets going, along comes a languid sort of "one-act play" in which characters just sit around and talk... and talk... about nothing in particular. Fine exercises for an actor or a writer, they don't make for good entertainment or storytelling, because they neither advance the plot nor illuminate a character we're actually going to spend time with. For example, at one point the film spends over 20 minutes in a room with 10 secondary characters (most of which have never been seen before) who all end up dead when the scene finally ends. There just doesn't seem much point to it.

But the film isn't a lost cause. While it does take its sweet time getting to where it's going, that "where" is a wildly entertaining riot when it finally does. The last 15 minutes is an insane cathartic festival of gore that makes you laugh, cringe, cheer, gasp -- the whole gamut. I still wish the movie had been about 40 minutes shorter, but the finale is great enough to make me mostly forgive it.

There's some great acting in the movie. Brad Pitt is really funny in his role -- though it's not truly the lead part, when you actually look at how much screen time he has. Christoph Waltz is a wonderful villain, and a number of French and German actors that we in the States wouldn't likely know give great performances that transcend the language barrier and keep you from having to slavishly read the subtitles every moment. (A really good thing, since there are a lot of them.)

In all, it's a fairly good movie, though it comes across like an Extended Director's Cut that I for one wish had been saved for the DVD. Still, I give it a B.