Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Brad Pitt's Mustache, Christopher Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth
Other Actors of Note: Michael Fassbender, B.J. Novak, Mike Myers, Til Schweiger, Julie Dreyfus, Samuel L. Jackson
Plot: In Nazi-occupied France during World War II, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as "The Basterds" are chosen specifically to spread fear throughout the Third Reich by scalping and brutally killing Nazis. The Basterds soon cross paths with a French-Jewish teenage girl who runs a movie theater in Paris which is targeted by the soldiers. Taken from www.imdb.com.
Before we start on this little jaunt into Quentin Tarantino's new blockbuster, let me clear a little something up first. Despite the fact that this film shares a name with Enzo G. Castellari's "Inglorious Bastards", it is NOT a remake. Oh sure the dark tone and the concept of a group of soldiers on a mission in Nazi occupied territory remains the same, these movies are like day and night.
Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds" is a spaghetti western set in 1940s Nazi-occupied France. The film is set in an alternate universe where the Allies have still not invaded Normandy by 1944. Our protagonists are two people: a French-Jewish girl named Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) whose family was killed by Nazis when she was a teenager, and a German Colonel named Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz), nicknamed "The Jew Hunter" due to his keen ability to find hidden Jews that managed to escape the Germans.
Shosanna, having escaped the murder of her family at the hands of Col. Landa, has gained ownership of a movie theater in Paris and does her best to live peacefully till all this war bullshit blows over. As fate would have it, she becomes the affection of a German war hero (Daniel Bruhl) who has had a propaganda film made about his moment of heroism (He's basically a German Audie Murphy).
Our war hero pulls some strings and gets the movie to premier at none other than Shosanna's theater in hopes of charming her. Shosanna sees this as the perfect opportunity to take revenge for her family by burning down the theater with Goebbel, Hitler, and Landa inside of it.
Meanwhile, a squad of 8 Jewish-Americans led by half-native American Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), dubbed "The Basterds" by the Germans, cut a bloody swatch across France killing and scalping Nazis left and right. The Basterds soon find out about the film premier and formulate their own plan to infiltrate and assassinate most of the Nazi party.
Brad Pitt is not the star of this movie, but he steals every scene he has. Aldo Raine is a tall southern man who is so stereotypically American that he bleeds red white and blue and shits bald eagles. He also has a mustache that could totally beat up Hitler's mustache. Pitt chews the scenery like a madman but still keeps his performance reigned in enough to make it absolutely brilliant. The way he has a perturbed look on his face in most scenes as if he's agitated by the prospect that he's doing anything other than killing Nazis at that moment gives him a kind of hilarious charm. One scene where he tries to infiltrate the premier as an Italian man never fails to draw laughter. Pitt doesn't have the best performance but he has one of the most entertaining ones by far.
Melanie Laurent is our heroine for the picture and the way Tarantino writes her is very genius in a subtle way. When Shosanna's family is killed, she doesn't seek revenge and go all "Sympathy for Lady Vengeance" hunting down the men responsible. She goes on about her life and just tries to get on with things. Only when the opportunity is placed in her hands does Shosanna's mind turn to thoughts of vengeance. Laurent plays her character as one of the most badass women in film history but she plays it in a feminine way which is what puts her (in my mind) above most other film heroines. One of the most badass scenes Shosanna has involves her applying make-up before the premier, lets see Sarah Conner pull that off.
If you see this movie for no other reason, see it for Christopher Waltz. As Col. Hans Landa, Waltz brings something magical to the screen. Every scene Waltz appears in is dripping with tension. He doesn't play a character that is obviously menacing; Landa is very polite and courteous like some kind of Nazi Columbo, but he's crafty and smart and every moment the man's on screen you just feel a lump in your throat and an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach. If Waltz doesn't win an Oscar for this, then the system is broken.
Til Schweiger, Daniel Bruhl, Michael Fassbender, and Diane Kruger all give great performances as well. They're just overshadowed by the three leads.
One complaint that I hear fairly commonly is the fact that in a movie called "Inglourious Basterds", the characters in the title don't do much. And indeed the Basterds only really appear in about a third of the movie. But this didn't bother me, because I went in expecting a spaghetti western, not a war film.
You see, Tarantino's film isn't like "Inglorious Bastards", "The Dirty Dozen", "Kelly's Heroes", "Where Eagles Dare", and "The Great Escape" in either tone nor narration. It's more in the vein of "Once Upon a Time in the West."
Think back to all those Sergio Leone movies and ask yourself how much of them were actually about Clint Eastwood's character. They were often about the supporting cast and especially the villain, with Eastwood's "Man-with-no-name" serving only as the tool that fixes the problem.
Here, it's the same with the Basterds, they show up to save the day but in the end all they are is a means to an end. They're more weapons than they are men and their real purpose is to swoop in and save the day at the last minute.
The second problem I want to address is the historical inaccuracy. Hopefully by the time you realize that you're watching a World War 2 film that takes place in 1944 you'll know that things aren't going to go down like history said they did. But some of you fuckers still did. Tarantino's Hitler wears a cape for chrissakes! This movie is practically a cinematic reproduction of "Wolfenstein."
The movie oozes with that Tarantino style that seems to flow so easily through all of his films and those concerned that the 1940s setting would hurt that style will be glad to learn that it's business as usual.
My one problem, however, is that Tarantino shoehorns his love of movies in her in a way that doesn't seem to fit. The climax takes place at a film premier, the German rebellion leader is a famous German actress, the English operative they bring in to infiltrate the film premier is a British film critic. The whole thing smacks of desperation of trying to make the influence films when it's really about war.
Having been a fan of all Tarantino's films (even the much maligned "Death Proof") I can safely say that this may be my favorite Quentin Tarantino movie of all time. (It's still a toss up with "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown")
It's tense, exciting, entertaining, and cinematically perfect. I give "Inglourious Basterds" a 5 out of 5.
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