Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” isn’t as indulgent as “Death Proof” or “Kill Bill: Vol. 2,” but it doesn’t have the filmmaking panache and wit of the moving image to forgive it its sins like “Kill Bill: Vol. 1,” either. It’s a slightly more contained bout of silliness, but it’s silliness nevertheless.
The film is trademark bloated Tarantino, featuring scene after scene that could have been curtailed or expedited, which might have significantly affected an off-putting 150-minute running time. But Tarantino lost his “no” men years ago, while distribution honcho Harvey Weinstein continues to serve as an enabler of sorts.
So more of the same is what we get.
But to look deeper at “Inglourious Basterds” is to find a world that might appeal to an angst-ridden child, perhaps. The rage that courses through its veins is pure, concentrated tantrum, and somewhat passé at that. After all, what thematic purpose is served by a film — however brazen and even “fun” in its historical revisionism — that takes relentless aim at the Nazis, of all foes?
The director might have found suitable commentary with a sense of parallel or metaphor, something, anything connecting the on-screen carnage to our own state of pent-up hatred toward foreign aggressors, for instance. But that doesn’t seem to be visceral enough for Tarantino, who takes glee at a prolonged take of a human head being scalped, or the rat-a-tat obliteration of another under a hail of gunfire.
Boys will be boys, I guess. But when will that cease to be enough for Tarantino apologists?