In his gloriously imperfect Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino distills every war movie he's ever seen into one potent, funny, morally indefensible, nine-tenths brilliant "impossible mission" flick.
Waltz will be unknown to most American audiences -- he was certainly unknown to me -- but he's nothing less than sensational as the silky, polyglot SS officer charged by the Fuhrer to root out the remaining Jews in France.
Landa is such a wily and despicable concoction that, in movie terms, he's almost impossible not to like. And therein lies part of my problem with this movie.
Its biggest flaw, though, for those who care about such things, may be its moral attitude. That might seem a stodgy thing to bring up in the context of a Quentin Tarantino movie, but it takes such center stage that it needs to be examined.
Irresponsible and overinflated though it is, Inglourious Basterds is still more pleasurable than half a dozen Defiances and Valkyries and Miracle at St. Annas put together.
Despite the injection of content from a variety of directions, Basterds lacks the crackly excitement of Tarantino's other efforts, mainly because he can't seem to tie the whole package together.
