What would you get if you combined The Great Dictator with Pulp Fiction and shifted the scene to France? One answer might be Quentin Tarantino's new film, Inglourious Basterds, but it's not a great answer because the film itself is so many things. Of the identifiable movies within its fanciful confines, one is rather good, another is so bad you have to like it and the third is just meandering. The overall effect is not unpleasant, a special sort of déjà vu. You find yourself trying not so much to identify Tarantino's allusions as to remember the imaginary films he makes you believe you have actually seen: Sergio Leone's Once upon a Time in the Resistance, for instance, or David Lean's Bridge on the River Seine, or Jean-Pierre Melville's Shadows of the Army.

LRB 10 September 2009 | PDF Download