Nine Bullets in a Clip:

1. For the casting and directing alone of German actor Christoph Waltz and what the actor does with Quentin Tarantino’s character of Hans Lander, it is a single performance like none other that makes Inglorious Basterds, in my opinion, one of the greatest films of all time.

2. However, Tarantino’s often used, characteristic infusion of 70’s guitar boam-chicka-wow-wow riffs and vibra slaps is so anachronistic to the WWII setting of the film that it often times removes you from some very serious moments. It’s not like Sofia Coppola’s use of modern music in Marie Antoinette (2006), or how contemporary rock helped the sparring in a Knight’s Tale (2001); Tarantino never allows this sound to be a norm. His homage to Ennio Morricone’s Spaghetti western soundtracks, like the one similar to Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time in the West (1968) that he used in Kill Bill 1 & 2 works well enough here in Basterds that he doesn’t need that other stuff. If he wanted it he should have used it to the extreme.

3. It’s not like the music is different from Chapter to Chapter either. Tarantino, like you see in much of his work, likes to experiment with “chapters” and stories within stories similar to Four Rooms (1995) and Pulp Fiction (1994). It works well here but his scenes, which are really what we get—five long scenes—they never fully stand out one from another (partly because he doesn’t jump across time like he has done in his other films). It makes you wonder if the chapters were really necessary. He could just as well have used fade-outs and fade-ins. Though he has a propensity for fonts on the screen there were enough subtitles too in this film that we didn’t really need the additional words. The idea here of course is to in each Chapter get to “the get,” where the scene gets to and becomes something. That’s the part we build up to that is so tension filled, so much like that end scene in Sound of Music (1965), so suspenseful and so expertly drawn out that while we’re on the edge of our seats we suspend all disbelief and forget we’re in a movie theater surrounded by strangers. It’s what going to the movies is all about. Escape. Does Tarantino burst that bubble? Sure he does, on more than one occasion in trying to be who he thinks he needs to be now that he’s established himself as that kind of director. Almost as if he’s paying homage to himself as much as he pays that for any filmmaker. What Christoph Waltz does is good enough to sort of make up for that drop of attention anyway. But each scene has that “get” and thus the film becomes a tad redundant.

4. Not that I care. Each scene did its job so well that it made the film entertaining. By far, then, Chapter Four turns out to be the best when at the time I thought it might be the worst; so well done that on several occasions it almost moved me to tears. The cards are so literally stacked against our hero’s that with claustrophobic surroundings and a powder-keg set-up we get mounting tension after tension. It’s to Tarantino’s credit that the whole thing unfolds as successfully as it does.

5. And therefore this film is what Valkyrie should have been. Let me just say too that directors of today should take note: Tarantino, while he does use elements and sometimes whole characters and/or scenes from other films, he is a filmmaker so fond of film’s history that his approach is more classical that you would think; so much homage to the John Fords and Howard Hawks of Hollywood’s better days that he oozes their shot and camera move sensibilities sometimes to a T. Even if in Chapter One of Basterds the last shot is taken directly out of John Ford’s The Searchers, I don’t really care. It’s enough of a delight to see that famous door-framed shot from 1956 reproduced here today, and done so well, that it adds another dimension to the film. It gave me goose bumps.

6. Similar to what we saw in Defiance (2008), it is the American Jewish soldiers this time that are kicking Nazi ass. Cabin Fever (2002) and Hostel (2005) director Eli Roth plays Donny Donowitz, one of the more outspoken Basterds. He yields a baseball bat and goes yard on a few Nazi noggins. So much so that he becomes the legendary “Bear Jew” that haunts Hitler’s dreams. It’s a brilliant piece of fiction worked into historical narrative history that makes you feel good thinking it might be true. The same goes for other liberties Tarantino takes with his story.

7. Damn if Tarantino doesn’t almost ruin it though in the ninth inning, in Chapter Five. He starts it off with almost a shot for shot reproduction of The Motels music video for Only the Lonely. Then David Bowie’s voice appears on the soundtrack and I’m all of a sudden in the 80’s…with such a strong 80’s feel to it it just stood out as the sore thumb of the film. It ends well, on a comical note thanks to the consistent if not lack of character-arcing performance of Brad Pitt. He does a cartoonish version of John Wayne, sort of, and while at first it doesn’t seem to fit his part Apache character of Lt. Aldo Raine Pitt is nevertheless a recurring character you’re happy to see. Not his best performance, but you could tell he was having fun. As were all of the actors, I’m sure. But as for a David Bowie song? Cat People (Putting Out Fire)? Way too artificial for that scene; too out of place, memorable as it is. Again, had it been more of the Morricone sound it might have made the film greater than it was. More time ambiguous and therefore more timeless. It is a stylish punctuation by Tarantino that he should have considered using more frequently.

8. It just so happens there was an Inglorious Bastards (spelled differently) film from 1978 starring Fred Williamson and Bo Svenson who played American escaped prisoners during World War II who find themselves back on a mission in France to steal a secret Nazi weapon. While it shares no similarities other than the same title and almost the same setting as Tarantino’s film, it does make you wonder, along with all of the lovingly fond tributes to other films and filmmakers, how much originality Tarantino has in him. But I like that this film has a sense about it similar to films like The Guns of Navarone (1961) and The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) that no other filmmakers seem to near. Those long, conversational scenes intertwined with bits of action until the final climactic moment. With actors strong in sensibility as Gregory Peck and Sir Alec Guinness were. And as funny-serious as films like The Dirty Dozen (1967) and Kelly’s Heroes (1970).

9. Too, Inglourious Basterds features a film within a film, and at times is about filmmaking. Any film about filmmaking or is referential toward films is a winner in my book. Tarantino makes movies the way theaters used to put letters out on their signs. That is to say he’s still putting films up there one letter at a time, the old fashioned way.