One of the (many) things I love about going to the
movies is to be surprised by a film when I had low expectations of going to sere
it and "Inglorious Basterds" held a few surprises for me but first the things
that DIDN'T surprise me.

I am not a big fan of Quentin Tarantino as I find
his pictures always seem to have gratuitous violence and this one does, many
times. There is the explicit, and unnecessary, showing the scalping of men.
Movies in the old days left it to the imagination more effectively. There is a
man being beaten with a bat, though surprisingly it is very obvious that a dummy
is being used in the long shots, not to mention people having swastikas carved
into their foreheads,  a finger being pushed into a bullet hoe in a foot among
many other such scenes.

Also, not surprising, were scenes running too long
as Tarantino has never met a scene he didn't like or having scenes, like the
'game' played in the tavern twice, both times unnecessary, making the movie run
2 hours and 30 minutes, at least 30 minutes longer than it should have. I don't
know whether this is the fault of Tarantino or his editor Sally Menke.

And, don't hate me, another thing that didn't
surprise me was that the worst performance was by Brad Pitt. It seems like he is
trying to switch over to being a character actor which is admirable on his part
but he isn't and won't ever be a good one. His performance made me feel
uncomfortable because it was so bad. His accent was all over place and IF he was
suppose to be a take off or salute to Aldo Ray he failed miserably.

The BEST part of the movie was the performance by
Christoph Waltz, an Austrian actor, who does a superb job as the villain and
definitely should be remembered at Oscar time. There are equally fine
performances by Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent who bring up the images of all
the femme fatales from the movies of the 1940s and many strong performances by
secondary characters.

As outlandish as the plot turns to a murderous
climax it does hold your interest and in turn makes you realize that the
inglorious basterds angle of the film is really a waste of time and certainly
not needed.

Another surprise that the film offers is that is in
spite of scenes being never ending the film doesn't seem 2 hours and 30 minutes
because there is always something, sometimes to many, things going on .

I really can't recommend this film except for the
performances of Waltz, Kruger and Laurent and though I was surprised that I
found it better than I had expected the violence would/should keep people away
and I wouldn't suggest any Pitt fans see it.