Quentin Tarantino's latest film is neither as gory nor as bad as reports from Cannes had us believe.

The spellcheck-bothering Inglourious Basterds, which has its London premiere in Leicester Square tonight, is a playful, if overlong commando-comic fantasy.

An underdog tale with a dash of American triumphalism, it imagines a beautiful French Jewess and a bunch of Yanks bringing the Second World War to a premature end.

Tarantino seems to have regained his eye for dramatic action, his ear for quirky dialogue and a great deal of his wit. Unfortunately, self-indulgence is also in evidence.

The Basterds of the title are a psychological-warfare unit of American Jewish soldiers killing Nazis as brutally as possible in occupied France.

Brad Pitt channels Lee Marvin as their leader Aldo Raines, a good 'ole boy who carves swastikas on the foreheads of the very few Nazis he lets go (in order to spread the fear, you see).

Anyone expecting a gore-drenched version of The Dirty Dozen will be disappointed, though.

Most of the Basterds are barely characterised, and Tarantino concentrates instead on Shosanna Dreyfus (the luminous Mélanie Laurent) whose family were murdered by "Jew-hunter" Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz).

Later, in disguise and running a Parisian cinema, Shosanna is wooed by a young German war hero-cum-film star and gets a wildly improbable chance to avenge herself.

There are nasty and brutish scenes of torture and mutilation, but they are short. There are also Tarantino's trademark in-jokes and references, in this case to German cinema.

He has maybe too much fun playing with the conventions of the war film, including witty versions of generic interrogation scenes and a Nazi-rally style film premiere.

Inglourious Basterds goes on general release on 21 August.