Academy Awards winner: Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's film stars Brad Pitt as the leader of a band of Jewish American Nazi-hunters who embark on a scalp-hunting raid across occupied France. Along the way they team up with up with  German double-agent Diane Kruger.

Since its unveiling at the Cannes film festival in May, Tarantino's WWII action movie had been slated by film reviewers, critical of its 'kosher porn'. Yet when Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds was released in the US in August it gave the director of Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill the best opening weekend of his career.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:Nigel Andrews, Financial Times: "Only Brad Pitt, in the cast, is seriously adrift. As leader of the titular resistance band he irritates in every scene – weird tics with his chin, one-note hillbilly accent – and makes us wonder, is there a new division in the universe." (Verdict: three stars out of five)

Peter Bradshaw, the Guardian: "A colossal, complacent, long-winded dud, a gigantic two-and-a-half-hour anti-climax, like a Quentin Tarantino film in form and mannerism but with the crucial element of genius mysteriously amputated. Over-stretched scene follows over-stretched scene in plonkingly conventional narrative order and each is stuffed with dull dialogue which made it feel like Mogadon was somehow being pumped into the cinema's air-conditioning." (Verdict: one star out of five)

Dave Calhoun, Time Out: "What's not clear is what Tarantino wants to achieve: Inglourious Basterds is an immature work that doesn’t know whether it's a pastiche, a spoof, a counterfactual drama, a revenge tragedy or a character comedy. How can we, within a space of minutes, feel adult sympathy for a hunted Jewish family and then childish glee when a Nazi's skull is crushed with a baseball bat? The one cancels out the other." (Verdict: two stars out of five).

'Inglourious Basterds' is out on DVD. ·