for the longest time I really never could decide if I liked the film or not... I would range from declaing it incredible to complete FAIL....
It presented bold characters, and a plot that was unique, and classic Torentino (which I have very much liked in the past..) and the prospect of thrilling action put and some immenent gore.
however, I eventually came to the conclusion that I did'nt like the the movie (though if this were a poll I would have voted "meh").
-- It did some things that I liked, but I could definately sence somethng wrong even early on when I began to empathizize more with the Nazis than the actual Bastards... The action was scarse, and each sequence seemed only 30 seconds long and sandwiched in between 4 hours of boring dialogue, the likes of which came close to putting me to sleep somewhere in the middle of the movie. The gore also managed to take away from virtually any symbolic, poetic, or otherwise aesthetic aspect of this film (this of course was not helped by my roomate getting in my ear about it afterwards claiming the entire film was an utter masterpiece when it comes to it's artistic nature...). I was also quite disapointed that we got to see pretty much NONE of the Bastard's exploits, which was part of why I was interestted in it to begin with... And then NONE of this was at all aided by the fact that somewhere along the lines of the movie, deja vu started to hit in, and it hit me how similar the movie was to Pulp Fiction, one of my all-time favorites, and then was hit by the epiphany of how significantly worse this movie was...
Oh! and for what it's worth, I did'nt at all like the protagnist, Nazi-killing leade-guy. He was the clossest thing to the "good guy" being portrayed in the film, yet he was nothing more than a murderous, unintellegent dick with NO attempt at care or understanding for who he was killing whatsoever. Honestly, if you look at what he was doing, and why, he's a borderline psychopath...
--But then again, really arentino should'nt be faulted for this, no one made any claim that he was at all "good", and I rather LIKED his accent, and some of the lines he said (like the "fighten' in a basement" one. -that cracked me up). Plus, Tarentino gets points for writting such a BOLD character, and follwing thru with it, rather than dumbing him down and making him more 'mainstream' for your "typical moviegoer".
Oh, and last thing, It seems to me like much of the movie was just overall going for pure "shock".
1. I HATE it when movies do this in general. it makes them a bit of a whore in my eyes for attempting to get money exclusively off being "different"
2. I am rarely "shocked" by anything anymore, so I am largely unimpressed at the main selling point there...
3. often times, the movies try to portray this SHOCK as "realism", and I'm sorry, but just because your NOT mainstream and cleashayed, that DOES NOT make you more realistic, and I'm slightly offended that you would really think that the world is so terrible... (though, I do'nt thing Bastards is guilty of this last one.)
I ca'nt really give Bastards a set number, because there were partss that I REALLY liked, and parts that I REALLY disliked, so I'm going to have to either give it a 4 or a 6 (depending on what mood I'm in.) but It is by no means anywhere CLOSE to what I would consider even IN THE RUNNING for movie of the year, or anything of that nature. At BEST It was just moderately good (or, a 7) and does'nt deserve to have it's name anywhere NEAR Pulp Fiction, or say.. Batman. (or even Zombieland, in my opinion...).