Inglourious Basterds Blu-ray Disc, 2009

History will not repeat itself for Quentin Tarantino.

While his "Pulp Fiction" arrived late at the Festival de Cannes and swept away the Palme d'Or in 1994, his World War II action movie "Inglourious Basterds" merely continues the string of disappointments in this year's Competition.

The film is by no means terrible -- its two hours and 32 minutes running time races by -- but those things we think of as being Tarantino-esque, the long stretches of wickedly funny dialogue, the humor in the violence and outsized characters strutting across the screen, are largely missing.

Boxoffice expectations for this co-production that will see the Weinstein Co. handling domestic and Universal handling international distribution still will be considerable, but there isn't much of a chance of the kind of repeat business Tarantino normally attracts.

The film borrows its title but little else from Enzo Castellari's 1978 WWII film. In Tarantino's version, a small group of Jewish-American soldiers under the command of Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine terrorizes Nazi soldiers in Occupied France, performing shocking acts of savagery and corpse mutilations. How close they come to war crimes is unclear because, in a very un-Tarantino manner, he shows little more than a few scalpings that earn Aldo the nickname "Apache" from the Germans and one execution by a baseball bat.

As a matter of fact, for a war movie there is very little action. People talk, soldiers scheme and a German war hero pesters a French woman in Paris.

Otherwise, the action comes in short bursts such as the machine-gunning of a hiding Jewish family through a farmhouse floorboards and a shootout in a bistro.

Reportedly, Tarantino has been having a go at this script for more than a decade, and it looks like he never licked the dramatic problems. The "Basterds" are formed in 1941, then suddenly it's 1944 and they have firmly established their reputation. But only one scene gives the flavor of what they do to deserve it.

Unlike Tarantino's previous films, "Basterds" does not build to a climax through a series of ingenuous episodes -- each one upping the stakes and the tension -- but rather it rolls the dice on one major operation.

The head of Germany's film business, Joseph Goebbels, wants to hold the premiere of a movie celebrating the exploits of the army's finest sharpshooter, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), in Paris. All the top Nazi brass will be in attendance, including Hitler. A British lieutenant (Michael Fassbender) parachutes behind enemy lines to organize the Basterds to blow up the cinema.

Unbeknown to the Allies, however, the cinema's owner, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), a Jew who seeks revenge for the execution of her family, has the same general idea, only she wants to lock the doors and set the theater on fire. Best of all for her, the head of security for the event is none other than the villainous Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), who killed her family.

The maneuvering by both groups -- the Basterds and Shosanna and her lover-assistant Marcel (Jacky Ido), with the Germans always seeming to be one step away from discovering the schemes -- occupies most of the movie leading up to the premiere. Then Tarantino rewrites the end of WWII.

There are a few moments of classic Tarantino tension in the farmhouse when Colonel Landa interrogates the French farmer hiding a Jewish family, in the bistro where an SS officer grows suspicious of a Basterd's German a

WWII Setting Made Extremely Surreal For Emphasis

This 2009 release marks a turning point in the directing life of Quentin Tarantino in a good way. The story telling gets more interesting & alive, which happens to make the characters extremely surreal & larger than life (not half-baked).

Although the film was nominated for 8 academy awards, I still felt that there were many things rushed about the final product. It's hard to put your finger on, but I think the film may have done better with the general public if it cut out some of the cruelty/gore that seems to permeate films today. The cursing didn't really seem to play any integral part as well. Camera shots & cinematography were used extremely well in this film as well as the audio.

Actually, the only character in this film that really didn't fit in to this picture was Brad Pitt's character Lt. Aldo Raine. He may have been chosen to bring in the big bucks for the film, however, it made the film less believable overall. Not that Pitt made a mess of his character, but the Tennessee southern accent really didn't fit well with over 22% of the film being spoken in French and 28% German. I found it very hard to follow the action in the film & read the subtitles as they was much dialogue that was long & choppy. The subtitles ran much to fast (too short a time span to read) at the bottom of the screen; sometimes running into contrasty areas of light & dark.

When drama was called for, Quentin really beefed up the soundtrack. When violence was shown, it really got bloody. This will not go down in history as a well-rounded family film, however, the grind-house feel was still there, which made it an extremely tense & an edge-of-your-seat type of film. I can't say Pitt performed any better than Tom Cruise in Valkyrie, but the casting, the direction, & screenplay makes it stand on it's own. I can't really say it should be in the top 5 films of 2009, but it was indeed a memorable film for it's creative fantastical fictional fantasy story that has many people talking about the what ifs of the outcomes of WWII ending before D-Day.

David Bowie's song about "putting out the fire with gasoline" was a nice touch to the final sequence. Although I thought there were unnecessary clips added to the film dispersed throughout to add additional story telling, it somehow did break a few long and exasperating scenes of monotony. The actor Melanie Laurent who played Shoashanna Dreyfus really pulled off some really great scenes as she hid her true emotions from Hans Landa (Chrisotph Waltz) who won the only academy award for Best Supporting actor.

Whether I thought certain scenes were cruel and unnecessary are or not is not the point, however, one sequence that was total acting (not reality) was when Pitt puts his finger in the bullet wound of Diane Kruger in order to get her to talk. At that particular point in time, her lack of intense displeasure of pain & her verbose speech that followed while he held his finger in the wound was a bit half-baked and, in my opinion, should have been shot a totally different way.

I dig Mike Myers in most any role that he plays, but it seemed that Myer's role made the film a bit too comical as his character reminded me too much of Austin Power's arch nemesis Dr. Evil. His speech was much too long in one sequence & should've been dispersed throughout the film for more character development. Myer's role, once again, in my opinion, needed to be much more serious as well as the whole tone of the film seemed comical.

Great Movie

Quentin Tarantino's latest movie is probably his best yet.

This one is about a group of misfits who set out to kill as many Nazi's as they can in France during WWII. Brad Pitt has a great performance as Lieutenant Aldo Raine who is leading his Jewish-American forces.

At times funny, and at times very serious, this movie keeps you entertained from beginning to end, despite it length (it is over 2 1/2 hours but worth every minute.

The all star cast includes: August Diehl, B.J. Novak, Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Daniel Bruhl, Denis Menochet, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Jacky Ido, Julie Dreyfus, Martin Wuttke, Melanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, Samm Levine, Sylvester Groth, Til Schweiger

Watch this movie you will be glad you did.

Rent it don't buy it!

Brad Pitt really over played the character and while many probably watched this movie because it's a Brad Pitt movie, he did very little to contribute to either the quality nor the story line itself, in fact the movie probably would have been better had his character been left on the editting floor. Christoph Waltz who played Col. Landa probably should win an academy award for this film. Also the girl brought in intensity to the film given that her family was slaughtered by Col. Landa's men. The first 20 minutes where Col. Landa interrogated the dairy farmer was the best. Too bad Tarantino couldn't have maintained that quality through out the film but then we had to watch Brad Pitt's poorly played character. The subliminal violence of the family being machined gunned through the floor of the farm house was far more effective than the openly graphic violence of scalping Nazi soldiers. Sometimes what you don't see is scarier than what you do see. Tarantino could have made a home run with this film instead he barely made it to first base.

"Good Tarantino Film!"

Brad Pitt stars in Quentin Tarantino's 2009 action thriller.
A group of American soldiers hunt Nazis and their leaders
during WWII. Brad is great in this and this 2-disc special
edition has nice picture and sound plus neat extras. Pick
up this good Tarantino film.