Quentin Tarantino never heard of a mash-up that he didn’t like. This time he squeezes a western and some revenge-sploitation into a period film about Nazi-Occupied France. And in Tarantino’s able hands, it works. The result is unique, funny, engaging, vile, subtle and important. You will be forgiven if you skip IB because it features a handful of scenes of over-the-top mutilation. It is a violent movie.
But otherwise, there is no excuse for missing Inglourious Basterds. It refines Tarantino’s most recent efforts, shattering the notion that “no one wants to see people sit around and talk” by providing scenes of “pure dialogue” that rivet and clutch. It provides a unique and unabashed perspective on one of the most important periods in history. It short, it breathes new life into the tired corpse of WWII movies, and then decapitates it.