I have to say among everything else, I felt there was something deeply flawed about the film as a whole. Tarentino clearly is telling two different stories: the Basterds on one end and Shoshanna on the other, both are trying to kill the Nazis but neither is aware of each other. And that's the critical flaw in the final episode: one is enough to succeed but there are two occurring. The Basterds presence in the final two sequences is unecessary for the revenge to be carried out. Indeed, the fourth and fifth acts of the film are reductive and take away from the power of Shoshanna's act at the end. The Basterds in fact just by being there are a bigger risk to the plot than anything they can do. That's the biggest flaw in the film.

Tarentino had a brilliant first act and a brilliant set up at the end of it. If the film had just beent he story of Shoshanna, it would have been a masterpiece. The Basterds, by contrast, are not only window dressing but clearly there so that we can have a fantasy where two Jewish men get to empty their machine guns into Hitler. Do they even notice the theater they're in is burning down aroudn them? Honestly if the film had ended on the image of the giant head laughing as the theater bruned down - had Tarentino removed the Basterds storyline entirely, he'd have at absolute masterpiece and it would have the tragic fact that Shoshanna died never knowing her vengeance succeded but still literally getting the last laugh. I'm inclined to therefore agree with Leonard Maltin's 2 and a half star review of the film than many of the others: the opening is a masterpiece and everything Laurent does is brilliant but Tarentino can't stop the machismo that hurts so many of his films overwhelming the day. It's a pity because there's clearly an incredible film here but Tarentino didn't have the confidence to make it.