The words “Understated” and “Quentin Tarantino” go together like peas and ice cream. The worlds most confident director and self confessed blabber mouth has hardly been quiet about his slow cooking project and I’m sure everyone already knows that his Basterds have been waiting in the wings for their que for more than 10 years.

So now that they’re here, is this Tarantino’s much whispered about “return to form”?

Well.. if, like me, you think that a film on par with Jackie Brown would be a more welcome return to form then, no. If the Kill Bill films more fantastical approach to the sly nod and hard hit film making that Tarantino does best is more up your alley, then even you may be left feeling just a tiny bit disappointed.

The film’s main focus is split three ways, in true Tarantino style… you didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you? The sharpest focus being on young Jewish cinema owner, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), who four years earlier, escaped murder at the hands of the films second (and best) focus, the infamous Colonel Landa (brilliantly played by Christoph Waltz). The Third is on that of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt)’s Nazi hunting Jewish platoon of the films purposefully misspelled title. All this is scattered around the bulk of the films premise which hangs upon a plot to assassinate all head members of the SS (including Hitler himself) at Joseph Goebbels film premiere in Shosanna’s very own cinema. Phew…

QT’s script has never ever set itself up to be historically accurate and in doing so the there is a great sense of “anything goes” which could only be seen as a bad thing by people who often forget that The History Channel doesn’t play in cinemas worldwide. The Nazi’s seem straight out of an Indiana Jones film and blab between killing just as much as Jules and Vincent did in Pulp Fiction. His films pride themselves on being a mish-mash of grabbed influences and there certainly are some bizarre blends going on here. Hopefully its enough to say that he even has the gall to include David Bowie’s Cat People in a pivotal scene in the film.

It is, of course it’s this type of fearless genre bending that Tarantino revels in and for the most part it actually works. His obsession with jangling western style guitars is more prominent here than in any of his other films and gels extremely well. The films nicely drawn out scenes are the best; the tense 20 minute first chapter entitled : “Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France…” and the pre-amble to an ambush in a Parisian basement bar show that QT still can deliver a few real pot boilers.

Pitt hams through it all with a thick as molasses Tennessee accent and injects as much cringe as he does chuckle, Melanie Laurent is the power lady of the piece and completely holds her own as does Diane Kruger’s tough German actress turned spy Bridget Von Hammersmark. Micheal Fassbender once again proves himself (outside of his staggering performance in Steve McQueen’s Hunger) with a couple of cracking accents but its the complicated and cool Christoph Waltz who steals the show.

His proud and chatty ‘Jew Hunter’ is sorely missed when off screen and although the dialogue is, as always, pin sharp throughout there is an strange air of pomp to parts of the film which often contain more farce than they do the tough/cool of Where Eagles Dare or The Dirty Dozen, none more so than in a scene where a totally miscast Mike Myers hands Micheal Fassbender’s Lt. Archie Hicox his mission papers. It hard not to imagine him breaking into the Austin Powers dance at any moment…

The film is brutally punctuated by Tarantino’s trademark flashback ultra violence and it’s chock full of spaghetti western references from Once upon a Time in the West to Enzo Castellari’s more grammatically correct ‘78 film of the same name. It see’s QT rewriting the end of the second world war, it blends the genius of Ennio Morriocone into popular cinema a little bit more and it manages to squeeze in yet another lingering toe shot to quench Mr Tarantino’s own self proclaimed foot fetish…

All the ingredients are there, Inglorious Bastards should work and you get the feeling QT really, really, really wanted it too. But, as film as a spectacle and nothing more, it doesn’t quite hit the spot. It’s what we’re coming to expect from the once-up-on-a-time boy wonder but there in lies its main flaw. It just doesn’t seem surprising anymore.

Making the supremely entertaining two part – martial arts – western – revenge film Kill Bill worked as total curve-ball after a four year hiatus, post Jackie Brown. The masterful Pulp Fiction worked as an expansion of Tarantino’s love for Eastern and French new wave cinema and as magnification of his debut Reservoir Dogs. Deathproof just didn’t work at all and Inglorious Basterds sadly feels like an ever so slightly long, although totally passable, genre bender, but regrettably nothing more…

The proof of the pudding lies with the films final words… a self gratifying and horribly embarrassing misfire of a line on the writer’s part.

If you, like I did, find yourself laughing, you’ll know exactly what I mean.