I got this e-mail from my father after he watched Inglourious Basterds. I love a fired-up negative review so much, I just had to post it:
Finally watched Inglourious Basterds this week. What an incoherent mishmash of other, better movies (for Nazi parody see The Producers, for undercover silliness see Top Secret, for cinematic conflagration see Cinema Paradiso, for gratuitous and pornographic violence see something else by Tarantino or Peckinpah, for rewriting history, see Fox News or a Republican press conference). Pitt's character was an insulting, simplistic stereotype. I was really put off by using Aldo Ray as the name-inspiration for this guy; Ray was a decent actor who actually served in the Navy in WW2 - a "frogman," predecessor to the SEALs. He saw action at Okinawa (BTW, did you know that this battle resulted in 50,000 US casualties and 100,000 Japanese? Compare to D-Day - 10,000 casualties for all allied forces?). For his war service alone, Ray earned better homage than this crappy movie and cartoon character. Mostly the movie doesn't ever figure itself out. It starts with a credible, tense and terrifying scene, then wanders all over the place and violates its own promise, resorting to gore when it wants to "get serious." Its one redeeming feature is the actor playing the German officer, but his deal-making at the end is totally inconsistent with the rest of his choices. His self-interested choice is more like one a 21st century wall street banker would make. Overall, it seems like something that could have been written and directed by a 15 year old kid just making things up to fantasize an altered outcome for history and have fun with creepiness.
Even though I liked the film, I have to agree with his points. I think I was too entertained to care while watching, but the "eye for an eye" attitude towards Nazis did bother me. And I did question the German officer's deal with Pitt. But now I'm all fired up to do my own crushing review! I've been trying to stick to movies I really like to avoid being negative, but there's nothing like an impassioned, rip-it-to-shreds diss!
