inglorious b******

[Saxman]

I was thinking about how this could have been done better.

The biggest problem, as I noted, was the feeling that Tarantino was trying to cram two movies into one with the "Revenge Drama" taking precedence despite the marketing focus on the more traditional "Action War Flick" of the Basterds. The Shosanna story DEFINITELY had a much different feel to it. The dark humor of the Basterds part of the story was gone, and it was definitely played much more seriously. Unfortunately, I don't think Tarantino has the chops for that type of story, so get rid of it. There's potential there, but leave it to someone who can REALLY do drama justice. As Shosanna's story is the central part of the ultimate, overall plot of the alternate history ending with the movie theater, that goes out the window, too.

Now once again, the marketing was making it look like a 21st Century take on The Dirty Dozen, so let's go with something more like that by focusing entirely on the Basterds themselves. Ok, so we have "Apache" Raine and his squad of Jewish-American GIs terrorizing German officers in Nazi-occupied Europe. Other than "killing Nat-zees" what would be the plot of the film? What would be the most poignant use of such characters? The Basterds ambush a top-ranking officer's convoy, and they discover evidence of a Death Camp within their area of operations. Honor-bound to protect their people, they decide to liberate the camp. The Basterds must figure out how to carry out the raid and escape with the prisoners back to Allied lines with their limited resources, ultimately putting their plan into action with a Dirty Dozen-style infiltration.

Simple, streamlined, to the point, action-packed. There's time to really learn about the characters, and an objective that will make the audience actually CARE if they succeed or fail. This could all still be done without sacrificing the black humor of the Basterds storyline from the movie as it was actually made.

[68Hawk]

I really liked it.

I thought is was more of an art piece than the entertainment cinema we usually see produced now a days.  I read in some critique that there's actually a lot of movie tributes worked in, but I don't know enough to detect more than a few myself.  I'll be interested to see a list somewhere when other movie freaks actually pick it to pieces.

One problem I have with Tarantino and with the Kill Bills specifically is with overly stylized violence and it coming off really cheesy.  Every time I mention something about a katana people always want to say something about Kill Bill or Hatori Honzo, and it disgusts me.  That being said I think he did a really good job in this one of mixing extremely graphic violence with humor, and at the same time making it very realistic (other than the lint puffs that come out when the squibs go off).  He also has an interesting contrast between ultra-violence somewhat rooted in reality to the stylized violence we often see on the screen in a subconscious comparison of the Nazi propaganda film and the Nazi's leering at it with the events that are unfolding around.  The 'real' action is ugly and disgusting, and lots of people die.  It in no way seems to glorify the violence, and actually begins to show the horror of necessary evil.

The dialogue, probably Tarantino's greatest strength, is wonderfully interesting, and really builds suspense at times.  I also thing the two plot lines, which has been a major complaint on this thread, worked well together and came together nicely.  The plot always seems to surprise, and left me riveted up to the end.  And with a somewhat unconventional plot line that didn't have what we might expect as a standard climax, I was almost disbelieving that the film was at it's end.  Thinking about it though, I guess it summed up rather well.

I might even go see it again with a friend...