Quentin Tarantino once again has amazed us with a truly unique piece of artwork that will stand the test of time for years to come. In vein of “Pulp Fiction”, “Kill Bill”, and “Reservoir Dogs”, Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” follows the same style of brilliant dialogue from his screenplay as well as masterful filmmaking with perfect style of music to make the film flow together. “Inglourious Basterds” is staged in five different chapters, with the first chapter kicking off with actor Christoph Waltz, aka “The Jew Hunter”, arriving on a French farm looking for a Jews that are being hidden by a French farmer and his three beautiful daughters. With only one of the Jewish girls getting away, the beginning sets the film up with a sequence of events that intertwines all of the characters to the films finale.
Chapter two introduces us to “The Basterds”. Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, or known to the Nazi’s as Aldo the Apache. Raine starts off his introduction with the rest of the Basterds lined up with Raine going over the details of their mission at hand. Their mission pretty much consists of them going into Nazi occupied France to kill Nazi’s with extreme prejudice. Raine runs his Basterds as if they are an Apache army that hunt their enemies down, assassinate and them scalp their corpses. With remaining any remaining captured Nazi’s, Raine sets the prisoners down and explains that he wants information from them, and if they refuse they unleash “the bear Jew” (Eli Roth) to bash their brains in with a baseball bat. Brutal shit. The remainder of the film consists of a German actress (Diane Kruger) helping the Basterds unfold a plan to kill Hitler and his top men during a premiere of a German film that is being run at the theater of the Jew woman that escapes from the beginning.
“Inglourious Basterds” plays out like any Tarantino film. There is a lot of dialogue, but it truly brings the film together much like his dialogue from “Pulp Fiction”. It does run slow at times, but then makes up for it with realistic gunfights. The action scenes are very realistic and well staged, but are graphic at times. There are a lot of subtitles in this film, but as much as I hate subtitles it is nice to see a WWII film that doesn’t have Nazi’s speaking English. One brilliant thing about the film is when the Nazi’s do switch from French or German to English; Tarantino incorporates it into the storyline. Hitler is somewhat comedically portrayed, and the ending may not be historically accurate, but audiences will embrace the change with the idea that “we wish this is how the war really was ended”. Brad Pitt plays a total badass to the teeth. Christoph Waltz will be remembered as one of the meanest Nazi antagonist since Ralph Fiennes in “Schindlers List” and the Nazi with glasses in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”. Eli Roth and Dianne Kruger provide a solid supporting cast that add flavor to the film. “Inglourious Basterds” is 2 hours and 33 minutes long, and my only complaint was it can be slow to watch at times. Along with other WWII mission films like “The Dirty Dozen”, “Kelly’s Heroes”, and “Saving Private Ryan”, “Inglourious Basterds” is a breath of fresh air from a decade of forgettable war films centered on the last Great War.
9.5/10 A must see
