Inglourious: movie mogul Quentin Tarantino Justin Goff/GoffPhotos.com

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Quentin Tarantino is out to change ­history. In his latest big-screen spectacle, Inglourious Basterds, the Pulp Fiction director takes a few ­liberties with history’s ­version of what happened at the end of the Second World War.

When it premiered in Cannes earlier this year, the movie ­polarised opinion. “Tarantino’s best since Pulp Fiction”? Or ­“Boring cod-Second World War schlocker”?

“I guess it’s been that way for a while,” spits the director in his rat-a-tat way. “Ever since Pulp Fiction, the critics have either been for me or against me. You get very few in the middle ground.”

The middle ground is not a place Tarantino cares to tread. The moment Pulp Fiction hit Cannes 15 years ago, the ­director carved a niche as the machine-gun-mouthed enfant terrible of modern cinema. His debut, Reservoir Dogs, and his arguable masterpiece, Jackie Brown, also dazzled the critics, devouring the best of genre cinema and yacking up a whole new meal.

“I do regard Jackie Brown as a special film for me,” he says. “But I know why people like the energy of the first two movies more. I was going for something different.”

After a string of wildly ­“different” ­adventures, among them martial arts (Kill Bill Vol 1), spaghetti western (Kill Bill Vol 2), and the 70s car-chase movie (Death Proof), Tarantino has produced a tribute to “macaroni combat”, a term ­describing Italian exploitation war movies of the 60s and 70s. Among them was Enzo ­Castellari’s 1978 flick Quel ­Maledetto Treno Blindato, released in the US as Inglorious Bastards.

"Ever since Pulp Fiction, the critics have either been for me or against me. You get very few in the middle ground"

“I only bought the rights to the title,” says the 46-year-old film-maker. “Our stories are completely different, but I love macaroni combat. There are some sweet genre movies in there. They all play a bit like The Dirty Dozen, and tend to have one big American star and then a bunch of less well-known ­actors around him.”

In Tarantino’s film, the big American star is probably the most sought-after in Hollywood. While audiences are more accustomed to seeing Tarantino dust off a fading ­legend before sending his ­trajectory flying once more (John Travolta, Bruce Willis, David Carradine), this time, in the A-list form of Brad Pitt, they’re witnessing Tarantino work with the biggest actor in the world.

“I’ve known Brad since True Romance,” continues Tarantino, recalling his first optioned screenplay, which featured Pitt as couch-potato stoner Floyd. “Brad is such a talented guy and, for me, looking at the films he chooses, he uses all his talent in the right way.”

The same can’t always be said of his director. Still, following the disappointment of 2007’s Grindhouse, which tanked at the box office, Tarantino has thrown his energy into a movie he’s sure will reignite his career.

“I have been working on this film for a decade, and I really hope it sits alongside Pulp Fiction and Scarface in people’s DVD collections. People might say I’ve gone too far, but I know for a fact Jewish ­people have been waiting for a WWII Jewish revenge movie for a long time.

“Watch the movie closely, and you’ll see how personal it is. Here’s a film in which cinema brings down the Nazi regime, metaphorically and literally. What could possibly be better than that? In this story, cinema changes the world, and I f***ing love that idea!”