Inglourious Basterds

*INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, out at UK cinemas from Wednesday 19 AUGUST*

It's over. We'd been sitting on our opinions of Tarantino's WW2 yarn since early July, but a strict embargo had condemned us to stonewall silence, even on our own goddamn PERSONAL facebook pages. To intensify matters, a freebie London paper slaughtered the flick a day after the screening via a paltry TWO-STAR REVIEW. A post-dodgy-takeaway fart would have gone down better in the Universal offices than some prematurely spouted guff about a film that's so much fun, we've even polished our eyeballs with Mr Sheen in anticipation of a greedy second viewing.

WAFFLY RANT OVER.

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS IS THIS REVIEWER'S SECOND FAVOURITE TARANTINO FILM AFTER PULP FICTION. It is most entertaining, indeed.

Set during WW2 in Nazi-occupied France, this is Tarantino's bow to '60s/'70s 'boy's own' adventures in the mould of Kelly's Heroes, The Dirty Dozen and The Great Escape. It's also the first Tarantino movie to feature outright COMEDY and laugh-out-loud moments, most notably when Brad Pitt's 'cheesy' US platoon leader impersonates an Italian, only to end up sounding like a village idiot from outback Michigan.

The premise is simple: Brad Pitt's moustache leads a small undercover team of Jewish-American troops into France, scalping enemy soldiers and instilling fear into the Nazi ranks. When Hitler decides to attend a major film premiere, rival plots to end the war are put into action, leading to a very exciting, fiery conclusion...

Some of the criticism levelled at Inglourious Basterds has been - and excuse our own Le Francais - garlic-drizzled frog's b*llocks. We've heard fools claiming that the scenes are too long, with too much talking and not enough action. Have their attention spans been so sapped and drained by years of MTV-influenced flashes?

There are NO pompous and pointless discussions about restaurant tippings, Le Big Macs and whatever those second-half Death Proof girls were rambling about (we fast-forwarded through that bit to avoid slipping into a coma). Almost every single scene is charged with a big electric rail-track of tension, with the scary sensation that something BIG is about to happen. And it usually does.

From Mike Myers' posho, Bladderadder-esque general to Christoph Waltz's intellectual, calculative and multilingual 'Jew hunter', Inglourious Basterds is a brilliantly-scripted, exciting, colourful, tense, stupendously well-acted, sometimes shocking, violent, humorous and bloody what-o good FUN war movie that doesn't always take itself too seriously. And despite its bloody nature and harsh setting, we'd even go sofar to say this is more 'Allo 'Allo than Saving Private Ryan. Basically, it's exactly what Tarantino set out to make - a Kelly's Heroes for the 21st century. Well done, you sweaty, big-chinned man, you succeeded beautifully.

*SEE TOP-RIGHT LINK FOR STAR INTERVIEWS AND CLIPS*

*WATCH MORE INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS CLIPS HERE*