Inglourious Basterds ***

Written by Dan Hudak |

Is it worth $10? Yes

Quentin Tarantino needs to get over himself. Aside from the eccentrically brilliant “Pulp Fiction,” far too much of his work (“Death Proof,” “Kill Bill Vol. 2”) is filled with self-indulgent dialogue that does his films a huge disservice. His most recent effort, “Inglourious Basterds,” is a great movie in many ways, but it also has too many tangential asides to realize its full potential.

And it’s all writer/director Tarantino’s fault. He wrongfully believes a 20-minute opening scene featuring a farmer (Denis Menochet) and Nazi colonel (Christoph Waltz) in a tense standoff is a smart way to set the tone for the movie. The writing is snappy at times, but it’s also way too talky in this scene and for most of the film.

The real story kicks into gear as Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) inspires his squadron of Jewish-American soldiers to hunt and kill Nazis. Known as “the Basterds,” the group becomes infamous for scalping SS soldiers after interrogating them for more information (the violence is graphic, but not gory).

The Basterds soon join up with a beautiful German actress and undercover agent named Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), who plans to get them into a world premiere movie screening expected to be attended by a number of Nazi officials. Little do they know that the owner of the theater, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), plans to take down the Third Reich herself.

In many ways the movie plays like a graphic novel set during WWII, meaning it takes place in a surreal alternate reality that freely combines fact and fiction. This approach is largely effective, as Tarantino is not bound to conventional reality and can use real history as needed while his imagination does the rest.

Unfortunately, his imagination does too much. For as good as many action scenes and some performances (notably Pitt and Waltz) are, and for as many Tarantino touches that are deliciously cinematic, there are just as many ill-advised asides that prevent the story from moving forward. For example, there’s a scene with three of the German-speaking Basterds in a basement bar. The underlying tension of them getting caught is palpable, but it cannot be sustained at a high level with all the chitchat we must endure, especially when a vital player doesn’t enter the scene until it’s ten minutes in.

“Inglourious Basterds” attempts to have the epic feel of Sergio Leone’s great spaghetti westerns (“The Good, The Bad, The Ugly”). But the difference is that Leone’s movies, while unbearably long at times, remained focused on their subject matter and almost always moved forward. Tarantino moves to the side far too often, occasionally having flashbacks within flashbacks. With such a compelling WWII story to tell, it’s silly for him to go out of his way to distract us from it.

Did you know? After ten years of writing and a 14-week pre-production period, filming began on October 9, 2008 in the small German town of Bad Schandau, near the Czech border. The film was shot almost entirely in sequence. As for the title, Tarantino has openly said he’ll never explain the spelling because doing so would try to make sense out of something unique/creative/different that isn’t really meant to be understood. However, he was inspired by a 1978 WWII film directed by Enzo Castellari, titled “The Inglorious Bastards.” Castellari’s movie doesn’t have much to do with Tarantino’s film, but it does have proper spelling. Castellari has a small cameo role in “Inglourious Basterds.”