The press makes you think Inglourious Basterds is going to be all about the squad of soldiers, all Jewish, led by Brad Pitt on a mission in Nazi-occupied France to basically nastily kill as many Nazis as they can, but it's really the story of Shosanna (a ravishing Melanie Laurent), survivor of a purge of her family by a villainous Nazi officer known as 'the Jew Hunter' who finds herself managing a Parisian movie theatre with ultimately fatal consequences. It's all very knowing - of course, we expect no less from Tarantino - and there's an underlying design and craft to it (the use of the cinema theme, for example, is integrated into the logic of the film as a whole rather than just being a throwaway piece of meta-referentiality), but I didn't find it completely satisfying. It's entertaining for most of its running time (though too long), and there are individual bits that sparkle (Pitt's fake Italian accent and constipated persona at the premiere is hilarious, and there are some knock-out individual shots), there was just something missing, some essential fire (ahem), soul maybe, I don't know.
