The plot involves a group of Jewish guerilla soldiers who terrorize Nazis and brutally kill and scalp them under the command of Brad Pitt as the merciless Lt. Aldo Raine. The story also involves the fantasy of wiping out the Nazi regime leaders, including Hitler, in one night. The plot, however unbelievable, isn’t the problem. Nor is the ugliness of the killing. It is the banality more than the brutality. Dialogue is colorful but unlikely. Situations are striking but unbelievable in the way they unfold.

There is a parallel plot involving the beautiful Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna, a Jewish woman who managed to escape the slaughter of her family discovered hiding in a cellar at the outset of the film. Cut to Paris where she now operates a cinema. With the entire Nazi leadership due to attend a premiere of a film about a Nazi war hero, who is also coming on to her, Shosanna has a plot of her own to get even by wiping them all out in one sweep.

Key in the large cast are Christoph Waltz as the smarmy, wily Col. Hans Landa, who is psychologically expert at getting at the truth of what his opponents are planning, and Diane Kruger as glamorous Bridget von Hammersmark, a German cinema star and secret agent working for the Allies. Those and other performances, including that of Pitt, are entertainingly flamboyant and Tarantino knows how to maximize the action scenes, whether involving individual slaughter or the climactic scene at the theater. The director also includes various “in” tidbits, such as playfully referencing German films and filmmakers, even having actor Emil Jannings portrayed in a cameo.