Inglourious Basterds: Critic Reviews

Austrian actor Christoph Waltz 
 triumphs, heroically, over Tarantino's brash, cine-drunk tall tale.

Simply another testament to his movie love. The problem is that by making the star attraction of his latest film a most delightful Nazi, one whose smooth talk is as lovingly presented as his murderous violence, Mr. Tarantino has polluted that love.

It fails as conventional war movie, as genre spoof, as trash and as pulp.

The outcome is gory and glorious.

For all its visual bravura and occasional bursts of antic inspiration, it feels trivial, the work of a kid who can't stop grabbing his favorite shiny plaything.

Inglorious Basterds is an entertainment but an uneasy one; it represents 153 minutes of bravura stalling, after which its creator loses interest and walks away.

Energetic, inventive, swaggering fun, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a consummate Hollywood entertainment -- rich in fantasy and blithely amoral.

When a man makes a movie this good, you can forgive him the occasional indulgence.

All the trademark Tarantino flourishes are here -- the joyous splaying of gore; the self-referential dialogue; the artful artificiality and the juxtaposition of humor and violence -- but they don't add up to much.

Scenes like the showdown in the tavern and the movie-premiere finale are as imaginative, energetic and, in their own weird, brutal way, beautiful as cinema gets.

The movie is an ungainly pastiche, yet on some wacked-out Jungian level it's all of a piece.

Inglourious Basterds is not boring, but it's ridiculous and appallingly insensitive-a Louisville Slugger applied to the head of anyone who has ever taken the Nazis, the war, or the Resistance seriously.

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a big, bold, audacious war movie that will annoy some, startle others and demonstrate once again that he's the real thing, a director of quixotic delights.

I don't know if I've ever seen a revenge fantasy so willfully messed up, sometimes offensively so, that still manages to be worthwhile for whole sections of its 2 1/2 hours. The opening is as good a sequence as Tarantino has ever created.

Inglourious Basterds is a social marker as startling as Easy Rider was in its day.

Tonally schizoid and rife with anachronisms (a David Bowie song on the sound track, out-of-era vernacular), Tarantino's Third Reich folly is utterly exasperating.

I'm tempted to say Tarantino has done it again, but I doubt anyone has ever done anything like his dazzlingly original World War II movie, Inglourious Basterds.

Basterds is not great Tarantino but it's solidly good Tarantino, and that's sweet news for his fans.

Tarantino crams enough movie-loving passion into the film to keep you not just entertained but occasionally riveted. Above all else, it's a really enjoyable ride.

World War II was more serious, complex and horrifying than all this comic embellishment, but if I sound critical, I apologize in advance. I had a helluva time watching Inglourious Basterds.

By turns surprising, nutty, windy, audacious and a bit caught up in its own cleverness, the picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavor that's new for the director.

Quentin Tarantino's extremely witty revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds may be the most fun you'll have at the movies this summer.

Inglourious is slow, dumb -- and in a first for QT in his cinema savant career -- incompetent.

These Basterds blend into a much richer story, a hugely entertaining one with stars you don't immediately see shining.