I finished Quentin Tarantino‘s Inglorious Bastards this morning at 2:30 am, and yesterday’s opinion (based on having read the first 80 pages) is basically unchanged. I’m still calling it a categorically insane World War II attitude comedy on top of a quasi-“exploitation film” about angry Jews paying back the Nazis for their many atrocities. It begins and ends in QT’s movie-nut head, and is very entertaining for that.
The film is going to seem loony-tunes to some, and that’s good. The Cinema Paradiso section (pretty young Jewish refugee running a Paris cinema, changing reels, not smoking for fear of burning the stored silver nitrate film reels) goes on a bit, page 50 to 100, give or take. A lot of bodies hit the floor from page 100 to 165. A lotta blood and bullets. The violent finale is wackjob. It’s either insane beyond measure or wildly imaginative in a good way, or both.
Oh, and the actor who gets to play the role of Colonel Landa (a.k.a. “the Jew Hunter”) is going to have a field day. Brad Pitt‘s “Aldo the Apache” part should be beefed up a bit; he’s too peripheral over the last 30 or so pages.