Nobody does bloody like Quentin Tarantino, with his chatty rat-a-tat dialogue that matches a machine gun that makes the same noises. All you have to do is look at the scene in “Pulp Fiction” where Marvin buys the farm in an old-style sedan (violent clip), and you’ll remember what I mean.
Now QT’s applying his evisceratingly violent lens to the new film (which is correctly spelled, even though it seems like it isn’t) “Inglourious Basterds,” as he kills Nazis like no filmmaker has before. In fact, in PageSix, they describe the film as “a slaughterfest in which hundreds of Nazis are gleefully executed in the most gruesome ways possible”– including machine gunning and scalping.

According to the article, the titular Basterds are “a team of ‘Bowery Boy Jews seemingly right from the heart of Hell’s Kitchen’ who are out to collect 100 Nazi scalps each.” Still reading?

An insider said: “The Nazis really get their comeuppance. It’s a big change from all the downbeat Holocaust films over the holidays,” referring to “The Reader,” “Valkyrie,” “Defiance,” “Good,” “Adam Resurrected” and “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas.”
Tarantino told Empire magazine that one Scene, set in a basement bar, will resemble ” ‘Reservoir Dogs’ but with Nazis and in German.” He adds: “The Basterds are acting like the Apaches in a no-win situation.”

Most of us have no sympathies for Nazis (and their sympathizers), but is the world ready for such graphic violence, even if Brad Pitt’s helming the scalping, and the scalpees are Hitler’s followers? People are still people, and much of Holocaust behavior has been explained as “man’s inhumanity to man.” So what does this kind of violence– even within the context of an understandable vengeance on evil– achieve? Should we revel in a victim’s revenge over his oppressors? I guess we’ll see soon enough: The crowd at Cannes will catch the film first this spring, and then QT will unleash it on the rest of the world.