I saw the movie today and thoroughly enjoyed it. What surprised me is that Pitt and the American actors only have supporting roles. The real stars and the ones who have most of the screen time are the German and French actors: Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, and the excellent Christoph Waltz who is the main star of the movie.
What ALSO surprised me is that the filmmakers allowed 80% of the dialogue to be in either French or German, with English subtitles. American movie-goers are notorious for hating sub-titles and success of a movie is often dependent upon dialogue being conducted in English and American English, preferrably. Recall Texas governor Ma Ferguson's observation back in the '20s that "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ it's good enough for me." English is the center of the universe for most Americans. Not so here. And I fully expected an English-speaking movie because in the opening scene the German and French protagonists "switch" to English because, as it was explained by the character, it was a language they could both understand, causing me to think that this would set the stage for the entire movie to be spoken in English, which didn't happen. In the silly and asinine "Scarface" by Brian DePalma such a "trick" was employed when early on in the film the Al Pacino character says "Hey, we must practise our English so from now on, no more Spanish". And then the whole movie of which 90% involved interactions between Latinos was implausably conducted entirely in English. Bravo to Tarantino et al for not falling into this trap.
