A Rare Movie That Combines A Lot Of Fun With A Lot Of Violence

Rating: 7/10 (21 March 2010)

The movie begins with a scene that definitely pulls you in. In Nazi occupied France in 1941, A German officer (Landa, played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) arrives at a French farmhouse. Nicknamed "the Jew hunter," he's looking for Jews being sheltered by the locals. With little option, the owner gives up his Jewish refugees only to see them murdered in front of his eyes, except for the daughter, who manages to escape. In the next scene, we see a group of American commandos formed under the leadership of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and consisting of 8 Jewish soldiers. Their mission: to get into France and kill as many Germans as they can - without mercy; and not just kill - they're to terrorize them and scalp them once they're dead, letting one escape each time to spread the news, with a Nazi swastika permanently carved into their forehead so that they'll never escape their Nazi past.
From there we find two different stories take root and develop: one of the young Jewish girl who seeks revenge; the other of the American commandos in France. Eventually, the two stories intersect (unknown to those involved in either) and the end result is a fascinating piece of alternative history in which the entire Nazi leadership (Hitler, Goring, Bormann and Goebbels) are wiped out in a Paris cinema as they watch a German propaganda movie.
This is a very violent movie with many graphic scenes. Frankly, it's probably not for the squeamish. Interestingly though, it manages a surprising balance - while extremely violent, it's also both fun and funny at times. The scene near the end when Raine and his men struggle to speak believable Italian (with terrible American accents) in the cinema to Col. Landa is brief, but hilarious. All the performances are good - most notably, in addition to those already mentioned, Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna and Martin Wittke as Hitler were standouts. It's a little bit long, mind you, and a few things seemed less than believable - why, for example, would such an important German propaganda film be premiered in occupied Paris rather than Berlin? Still, this is very powerful for a completely fictional film.