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Throwing back, I somewhat belatedly began to think of how crazy Werner Herzog is and how much crazier Kinski drove Herzog, who obviously didn't need the help. And I started to imagine that by using this song, Tarantino somehow wanted to get me thinking about German film history (Riefenstahl! Pabst!) and doesn't that just sound like something he might do, but then the big Giorgio Moroder-produced drum break kicked in and I started thinking about Flashdance, Dance Fever and the one time I saw some French ice dancers skate to this music and how their routine sort of rocked. Whew. I suppose it's not appropriate to blame Tarantino for my adult-onset ADD, but he wrote and directed a good, strong film. I probably could have enjoyed it even more had he not let his uber-fondness for film-geek touches get a bit out of hand.

Tarantino likes to go back to the well of his familiar early and often. The scenes play out like stand alone dramas which are all later seamlessly interconnected. He jumps between genres when introducing members of the Basterds. He employs Samuel L. Jackson in a narration sequence and Harvey Keitel's voice is heard during a noteworthy phone call. There is a Mexican standoff in the basement of a French tavern between Raine and a new father. It reminded me greatly of the scene where The Bride realized she was pregnant in Kill Bill Vol. 2. The opening sequence on the dairy farm and the Operation Kino scenes retain the ebb and flow of so many of his earlier works. Fraught with tension throughout, there are comedic elements interspersed with sheer terror, usually concluding in a hailstorm of bullets.

I tend to agree with the lyrical assessment that the opposite of war is not peace, it is creation. And yes, I did crib this from Rent, but I think it's applicable when reviewing this movie. Putting Hitler, Goebbels and many of their highest-ranking goons inside a French cinema, plotting their demise as they lustily cheer on a crap piece of German propaganda is the greatest revenge a lover of film, beauty and art can wage on a group of bigoted thugs who brought so much death and devastation to a continent. Many of the characters in Inglourious Basterds look for their revenge, some triumphantly, some in vain. Tarantino posits here that the greatest revenge of all to be gained is that of creation over destruction.

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