That fine old sixties exclamation “That was wild!” has never been particularly useful to me; I always found it vague. Well, never has it
seemed more perfect than in describing Inglourious Basterds, the new film by Quentin Tarantino. It is wild! Funny, tense, violent, exciting–it’s really enormously entertaining. In some ways, it’s even more entertaining than the endlessly imaginative Pulp Fiction, although Pulp Fiction, set in the criminal demimonde of Tarantino’s imagination, doesn’t leave a creepy 
aftertaste which Inglourious Basterds, set in the entirely real and altogether painful event of the Second World War, does generate. Although I suppose the reality is that Inglourious Basterds isn’t set in World War 
II, but in World War II movies like The Dirty Dozen, the previous gold standard of combined over-the-top humor and violence. It can’t be overlooked that so much of the film revolves around the premiere of a film at a cinema, and the role of an actress, a film critic, the German Audie Murphy, Josef Goebbels as a film producer, the appearance of Emil Jannings, the mention of a couple Leni Riefenstahl films, the significance of silver nitrate are all significant. (I also noted more than a little influence from Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos, Marvel’s great WW II comic book about a colorful behind-the-scenes unit (0ne of whom was Jewish) that help bring about an Allied victory. The film is full of 
brilliant set pieces: the opening scene in the French farmhouse, and the wonderfully exciting meeting in the tavern really stand out.The 
acting in the film is amazing: an unleashed Brad Pitt ecstatically chews the scenery, but Christoph Waltz as a velveteen Nazi is amazing. Diane Kruger, a beauty who never quite commanded a film (maybe it was the burden of playing Helen in Troy; I never could quite accept that hers was a face that launched a thousand ships), is pretty wonderful playing a Marlene Dietrich-like actress, and Melanie Laurent, a young French actress, is a revelation. I expect we’ll see a great deal more of more of her.
