Tarantino's Love Letter

Inglourious Basterds fails to be a masterpiece because if you make an epic about a little topic like avenging the Jews, you need some emotion. You need a little bit of soul stuck in with the wit and the cool and the trademark film geek insider references. I don't mean you have to get verklempt. But you want someone to hate a little bit—and someone to root for. You felt something when Thurman, as the pregnant bride in Kill Bill, was shot on her wedding day and her child taken away from her. By the time she killed Bill, you wanted him dead as much as she did.

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Laurent, on the other hand, is a flat, dour presence and acts in general as if she has little more to avenge in this movie than perhaps her credit card line being cut. It's not entirely her fault. The part is underwritten from the moment we see her run from the farmhouse in the opening scenes—but never see the other members of her family or how they are killed. For once Tarantino, who's often criticized for being too violent, wasn't violent enough when the movie could have used it.

Masterpieces also need a protagonist to carry the story, or at least one who's visible. The star of this film is really Tarantino, telegraphing us in interviews prior to the film and while we watch it what a masterpiece it is while we search for someone to lead us onscreen. Pitt's energy and hilarious character helps. Waltz is a revelation. Kruger, playing a German actress and double agent named Bridget von Hammersmark gets to hold a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich and speak her native German. But there's no hero, or anti-hero, to give the film traction beyond its series of gorgeously shot, imaginatively written and acted scenes.

I have a Jewish friend who, when she hears about some new development going on at work or in the world, always asks, "Is it good for the Jews?"

I say, Inglourious Basterds isn't good enough.

Dana Kennedy, a former correspondent for ABC News, Fox News and MSNBC, who also writes for the The New York Times, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time magazine and People, among others, is based in Europe.