Reviewed by Tim Wong

TARANTINO, OR "Q" as he's self-importantly known, intends to eventually begin production on the overdue, ironically titled Inglorious Bastards. One can only speculate as to how Quentin plans to batter a World War II movie in that illogical, sometimes irritating postmodern crust, of which to date has thickly coated his entire 5-film back catalogue in greasy pastiche. And here's the irony: QT finally including the term "bastard" in the title of a film when it's been long apparent – at least to me – that he is and always will be that cocky, self-fashioned illegitimate love child of a filmmaker. In other words, a cinematic bastard.


Compounding the irony is the question: how does a film set during a serious, tumultuous period in 20th century history lend itself to the bastard school of directing? Either Tarantino plans to reconstitute the past like Rambo did to post-Nixon Vietnam, or make a kind of witty, satirical-Beach Boys war lament for the 90's, something I don't think he's capable of. No, the rare possibility is that Inglorious Bastards could in fact resemble something of a regular movie, with a beginning, middle and end (in that order), less of a mix tape soundtrack and the abandonment of all those uber-geeky movie references.

Although Kill Bill Vol. 2 belongs to Vol. 1 in its entirety, the film itself seems to suggest a shift – or rather, exhaustion – of the arbitrary mish-mash cinema that punctuated all those former impure moments when The Bride didn't have a name and Bill didn't have a face. Vol. 2 is about equalising all the cinematic excess and overdose that preceded it; a purification and certainly a return to more levelled, nearly mature type of filmmaking. Some impurities, of course, still remain, like the lame Searchers reference or the twangy Ironside rift, which is designed to announce Uma's moment of roaring rampage, only it kind of doesn't third time around. Excluding the wonderful Kung Fu mini-retrospective – which works because it's isolated – the few (obvious) remaining nods to this-film-and-that peter out, maybe because they're half-hearted, mostly because they seem to belong elsewhere.

Vol. 2 might have inverted the Kill Bill axis, but let's be honest: you can't take the Quentin out of the Tarantino. The persisting irreverence may seem like leftovers from the first course, but it's also wantonly there because the poor bastard can't help himself – mixing, matching and cross-breeding genre and style to ultimate, designer-movie effect. Concluding from this the chance that Inglorious Bastards might represent any sense of regularity is just wishful thinking, yet Vol. 2 does propose one thing: Tarantino can make a normal(ish) movie. Wisely, it was the second of the two, proof that the East can't always mix with the West, but when it does, the results are spectacular.