lchazbits30

Do not get me wrong. I do not think this film was bad by any means. However, I absolutely do not think it was great whatsoever. I do not think it merited the praise it received. I could not get into this movie. I did not find any character particularly riveting. Instead, I believe everything was oversimplified. There are three significant characters who can all be fully described in one word. William James(Jeremy Renner) is reckless, JT Sanborn(Anthony Mackie) is rational and Owen Eldridge(Brian Geraghty) is a whiner. Talk about simple and boring. It is a complete misconception to call the "protagonist" William James anything more than an action junkie placed in a dramatic film. He does not fit. Sure he disarms bombs and saves lives but you get the idea throughout the film he just does it for the thrill. His experiences are nothing more than him indulging in his cravings for adventure, which makes it very difficult to connect with him in dramatic scenes. The overall point of this story was to connect with this character and how he is consumed by "war". I feel like I did not have this connection and the actual story was not strong enough to support where the characters were lacking. I could see how war veterans could connect because they probably have had similar experiences to relate making this film an involved reminiscence. I do not see how your average moviegoer could call The Hurt Locker a "great" film/experience when it lacked great dialogue, a great story, complex and diverse characters, great acting. The Hurt Locker is an average film. There is nothing about it that makes it stand out above and beyond any other war film I have ever seen and it certainly did not deserve the Academy Award for Best Picture.

This comment is a very generous 6 stars out of 10. This is not Quentin Tarantino's best. I realize when viewing a film you should willfully suspend your disbelief but that is not the problem here. I am more than willing to watch far fetched historically inaccurate movies. Inglourious Basterds was simply a horrible idea. This movie lacked any and all good qualities a movie should have.

Plot Development. There were some entertaining scenes that were preceded and followed by very long and quite boring scenes.

Dialogue. The subtitles are exhausting and take away from enjoying the essence of the acting, plot development, and cinematography throughout basically the entire 153 minutes.

Character Development. There were hardly any sufficiently developed characters. Brad Pitt had some comical dialogue but was hardly a likable character. Like all of the other characters(except Col. Hans Landa) his lacked any sort of complexity whatsoever. Christoph Waltz (Col Hans Landa) puts on a flawless performance and is probably the best and most well developed character. Waltz brings a delightful talent to the screen, which was unfortunately surrounded by sub-par and adolescent writing/direction.

I'm usually able to stomach distasteful gore in a movie if it can be supported by a worthwhile story but Inglorious Basterds was not one of these experiences. The film was not really even titled accurately. Certainly there were "inglourious basterds" but they didn't even contribute enough to have a whole movie titled after them.

In summary, this was 153 minutes of Tarantino's sick and twisted day dream. I am a big fan of his but this one just lacked the talent and creativity we all know he has. I think people who enjoyed this were probably just too excited to really watch and evaluate it carefully just because it was a Tarantino film. Plus it was exponentially better than Death Proof so I suppose he's made a small step up. ha.