INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) *** Aha! At long last, a proper foil for the blunt touch of Quentin Tarantino! I mean, c'mon, if anyone deserves to get their heads split open and asses beaten boneless with baseball bats...I did go in contemplating the possibilities of glorified, morally delightful violence on a near Goodfellas level. Well, there's nothing quite as funny as the bar bludgeoning, but it's very good and has some delightfully witty moments. I mean, c'mon...the Nazis ? There's no such thing as overkill. What group in the history of mankind lends itself so well to mockery? I mean, the Stalinists were just plain evil, but so drab. Maoism was absurd enough, but lacked the great ornamentation. Nope, it's the Nazis who are the funniest of cartoons, if you're willing to go there. And no one has, like Woody Allen in Zelig. Tarantino is a little more subdued than usual, which means that your date won't have to look away from the screen for more than a few times, and not for more than three minutes at a time, and Brad Pitt is great as a subdued...dude. He doesn't get credit for his range, because he's so great the hero. This guy is heroic in his own way, but not at all in the Robert Redford mode (better than everyone at everything) that Pitt does even better than Redford, which is saying something. The casting's great.....Diane Kruger is absolutely reptilian at times, which isn't easy for a pretty girl I'd think; Eli Roth is deserving of the moniker The Jewish Bear in the most Tarantino moment, Til Schweiger as a good monster, and Mélanie Laurent demonstrates brains and grit to a degree that makes the plot real, even this far out on what you know is a false ledge.. She also smokes very well. Oooooh, and Christoph Waltz as the arch-villain. That's how we turned the OSS into the CIA, you know. No, really. I understand that there may be some humanistic point to be made about laughing at a bunch of Nazis getting slaughtered while they watch a film about them slaughtering us, but there are some such points that demand no more than to be ignored. So I'd suggest playing properly-it's a team game-and laughing wildly along with me and the rabble. You'll get the most out of it that way.
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