'Inglourious Basterds" opens with a precise, taut, suspenseful scene — a masterwork that spans about 20 minutes and deals with an odious Nazi invading the pastoral home of a French dairy farmer in search of a missing Jewish family. Displaying a control not seen since "Pulp Fiction," director Quentin Tarantino creates a rhythmic tension that mirrors the geekish persnicketiness of Nazi Col. Hans Landa (superbly played by Christoph Waltz) with the soulful resignation of farmer Perrier Lapadite (Denis Minochet).
The scene is so brilliant that you begin to suspect that you might be witnessing the rebirth of an auteur, bouncing back from a long period of B-movie ribaldry and excess.
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Such mastery, however, begins to fade in what Tarantino labels Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of "Inglourious Basterds," a fantastical tale that rewrites the ending of World War II and can best be summarized as a Jewish revenge fantasy against the Third Reich. If only evil could be obliterated with one fell swoop, the fatal blow delivered by the very people who were being unjustly persecuted and massacred.
The substantive problems begin with Chapter 2, when Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) metes out vigilante justice to three Nazis who have been captured in France by his ragtag group of Jewish heroes known as the Basterds.
The Basterds take no prisoners, thanks to the bat-wielding "Bear Jew" played by Eli Roth. They crush skulls and scalp their Nazi captives. And as you might suspect, Tarantino does not flinch from the gore. In fact, he seems to revel in it, showing little or no interest in the moral complexities of killing another human being.
Chapter 3 offers a welcome respite from the violence and is almost as controlled as the first scene. Once again, a Nazi officer menaces a French citizen, but this time it's a German hero, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who thinks he is wooing but is actually harassing Parisian movie theater owner Shosanna Dreyfus (M?lanie Laurent). As the theater owner, Laurent is the epitome of controlled rage, having hidden her Jewish identity after the murder of her family.
Chapter 4, which takes place in a Parisian tavern, also offers a great set piece, this time with Michael Fassbender as a British officer masquerading as a Nazi soldier and Diane Kruger as a German actress who is working undercover for the British. But Tarantino doesn't know when to stop and far exceeds the 20-minute rhythms of the previous scenes. The climax of the tavern scene is followed by an anticlimax that seems unnecessary, diluting the brilliance of Fassbender's performance and concluding with the reappearance of Pitt.
All of these disparate elements and characters come together in the final chapter, with a premiere of the latest movie of Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels in Laurent's theater. And the opening of the chapter is perhaps the movie's most thrilling moment: A revenge-seeking Laurent dons a red evening gown and puts on her makeup to the blaring theme from "Cat People," sung by David Bowie. It's a classic Tarantino moment, melding the perfect song with the perfect moment. But once again, Tarantino disrupts the movie's rhythmic musicality with flashbacks, subsidiary plots and sideshow murders.
If all of this sounds dismissive, it's not meant to be. It's just that someone needs to tell Tarantino that B-movie excess doesn't mesh well with a tale about the horrors of World War II.
Tarantino's fans, however, likely will not be disappointed. And even though some viewers might be put off by the excessive violence, it should be noted that the movie is worth watching because of the stunning performance by Waltz, who won best actor at the Cannes Film Festival when "Inglourious Basterds" premiered there in May.
If nothing else, Tarantino shows that he can still pick the right actors for the right roles and elicit performances that put most other directors to shame. Some of the chapters also remind us that Tarantino can craft moments of cinematic audacity. If only he could keep his enthusiasm for B-movie violence in check. In "Inglourious Basterds," such cheekiness tonally undermines what could have been a masterpiece.
