Stylish, Shocking, Witty WWII Adventure Story Of Plot To Destroy The High Command

Rating: 6/10 (20 March 2012)

In World War II, the Basterds are an elite unit of Jewish-American soldiers specialising in killing Nazi officers. When they get wind that the SS top brass will be attending a film premiere in Paris, they jump at the opportunity to destroy the cinema ...
As ever with Tarantino's work this movie is exciting, beautifully constructed, extremely stylish, violent and controversial, and features several remarkable performances. On one level it's a brilliant intellectual discourse on the depiction of Nazism within cinema (the Fassbender character is an expert on UFA, the second half revolves around a film-within-a-film) but on another it's a very blunt and sadistic exploitation piece in the vein of Ilsa: She-Wolf Of The SS, with plenty of torture and mayhem to shock the gentle cinephile. It plays with conventions of storytelling, re-writing history, suddenly killing off characters you thought were more important, even adding slapstick humour (Waltz' reaction when Kruger explains the reason for her injury is priceless) to an extremely disturbing tale. The two subplots dovetail effortlessly into the cinema finale and the final twist of uber-nasty Colonel Landa's treachery leaves you gasping. There are perhaps a few limitations; there isn't very much action and Tarantino loves to stage long, involving dialogue scenes which perhaps slow things down a little too much, but his direction is so assured and the actors are so captivating that it rarely feels sluggish. In particular Austrian actor Waltz is simply outstanding in an almost unplayable part - charming, ferocious and contemptible all at once, whilst both Laurent and Kruger are terrific in the two key and contrasting female roles. For moviehounds the film is packed full of historical film trivia - the title (nobody knows why it's misspelled) comes from the English title of Enzo Castellari's 1978 B-picture Quel Maledetto Treno Blindato, a sort of Dirty Dozen knock-off, it's full of crazy music cues from several obscure movies (the slow-burn David Bowie song comes from Paul Schrader's Cat People), Mike Myers and Rod Taylor appear in one scene but under unrecognisable makeup jobs, QT alumni Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel both do voice-overs and the characters argue the merits of Leni Riefenstahl. And where else could you see Eli Roth (director of gory current US cult horror flicks) pretending to be Antonio Margheriti (director of gory sixties Italian cult horror flicks). All in all this is great stylish fun and a fascinating picture to pick apart afterwards.