Easily Tarantino's best and most cohesive film since Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds adopts the same homage-strewn, noirish quality of that earlier film, and fits snugly into Tarantino's oeuvre. Anyone looking for historical accuracy or depth of character should look elsewhere for their entertainment, because Inglourious is entertainment in its purest sense, a Boy's Own yarn that wouldn't be out of place in the pages of The Eagle. The film works like a kind of cartoon, and if you take it in the spirit that it was intended, it's hard not to enjoy it.

The central premise is in the title, namely a hardcore group of Allied soldiers charged with the sole mission of killing Nazis. As you'd expect from Mr T, the scenes portraying this mission are casually and unflinchingly violent. As Lt.Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) tells his newly assembled troops 'Each and every man under my command owes me one hundred Nazi scalps. And I want my scalps.'.' This somewhat direct and darkly humorous plot line is interwoven with that of Jewish escapee and French cinema owner Shosanna Dreyfus (a luminous Mélanie Laurent). Having watched her family murdered by notorious ‘Jew Hunter’ Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), Shosanna is out for revenge, and when a Nazi war hero strays into her life, revenge is handed to her on a platter. Smitten with Shosanna, Pvt Zoller (Daniel Bruhl of The Edukators fame) encourages the relocation of the movie portraying his exploits (and in which he arrogantly stars) from the Paris Ritz to Shosanna’s smaller suburban cinema. When Hitler and a good portion of the Nazi High Command take an interest in attending the movie, the two plots are set on a collision course. The results, as you'd expect from Tarantino, could never be anything less than explosive.

Inglourious Basterds is that rare thing - a movie that owes its genesis to so many others, yet completely dismisses them in favour of fantasy. This kind of originality, this refreshing of old and hackneyed themes, is the hallmark that made Tarantino famous and is, indeed, his speciality. Where that homage stumbled in the hit-and-miss Kill Bill, the director is right on the money here, presenting an engaging and amusing film that never takes itself too seriously. Inglourious deliberately defies deeper analysis and at times you get the feeling that Tarantino is having a laugh at his own expense. A word of warning: if you don’t appreciate Mr T’s work, it’s unlikely that you’ll enjoy this film. If you do, chances are you'll love it.

There are many great scenes here - the red-faced and ranting Fuhrer tied in knots by the rampaging Basterds, the flirtatious actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) fending off the attentions of a drunken German soldier in a tense moment of subterfuge, Mr Pitt's dreadful (or rather, non-existent) Italian accent just when it’s needed most. However, Christoph Waltz steals the show as the clever and scheming Landa, one of the cruellest Nazis you'll ever see on screen. In fact, it's the comic book characters and pop culture mentality that make this movie work so well. When the bullets start to fly, you know you'll probably never see such wilful relish in the slaughter of Nazis again. The director is clearly having fun. Sentiment and 'glory' are dispensed with entirely, and you're left with a very different kind of war movie, one that sticks two fingers up to its critics by simply doing what it sets it out to do. Entertain.

JB

Saw this last night and i too loved it, JB - although had to cover my eyes a few times. Thought the fantasy element was brilliant - the movie kept sliding between feeling totally in the classic war film genre and then wackily jumping straight out of it. Great stuff.

I saw it a few weeks ago and loved it too. Jackie Brown is still my favourite, though.

Cath