War is hell... and a lot of fun too, apparently!

Rating: 10/10 (16 September 2009)

For years, Inglourious Basterds was one of those films many aficionados had heard of, but never actually hoped to see: originally conceived at around the same time as Pulp Fiction, it was postponed twice when Kill Bill and Grindhouse got in the way (three times if you count the kung fu movie QT announced in late 2004 and has made no further comments about thus far). Additionally, so many rumors started circulating, be it about the script's scope (Tarantino reportedly considered making two movies, or even a TV miniseries) or the casting (at one stage or another, the film was going to star - according to various rumors - Michael Madsen, Tim Roth, Adam Sandler, Eddie Murphy and the dream team of Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger), that it was safe to assume Basterds would be just another promise the director just couldn't find the time to keep. Then, all of a sudden, there it was: script completed in the summer of 2008, green-lit in record time so that Tarantino could meet the Cannes deadline and released in theaters three months after its prestigious French premiere in a "retooled" version (it's actually just a minute longer than the cut shown in Cannes). Was it worth the wait and speculation? As ever with QT, the answer is a resounding "Hell, yes!".
Starting very boldly with a 20-minute conversation between two people (a scene that reminds of the Sicilian bit in True Romance, a parallel Tarantino himself also acknowledges), the film then sets out to introduce its first main plot: the story of a French Jewish girl, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who manages to escape while her entire family has been slaughtered and vows revenge on all Nazis, ideally represented by the suave but cruel Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Her story intersects with that of the Basterds, a team of Jewish-American soldiers (played by the likes of Eli Roth, The Office's B.J. Novak and Freaks and Geeks' Samm Levine) under the command of Tennessee-born Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). Their mission? To go to France and kill (and scalp) as many Nazis as possible, with some help of the British (cue the presence of Michael Fassbender, whose real- life first language is, ironically enough, German). Needless to say, Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke) isn't very happy to hear about this.
Although it takes its title (sort of) from a cult film by Italian director Enzo G. Castellari, called Inglorious Bastards in the US (the proper translation of the Italian title, Quel maledetto treno blindato, would have been That Damned Armored Train), Tarantino's new opus isn't a remake. Heck, it's not even really a war movie, just like Kill Bill isn't really a revenge flick. Sure, it's set "once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France", as the title of the first chapter (there are five of them) informs us, and it's about American soldiers fighting against Nazis, but the joy of the movie lies in watching the director take all war movie conventions and do whatever the hell he likes with them.
Nothing in Inglourious Basterds looks or sounds conventional: for one thing, the titular characters don't appear at all in two chapters, and Raine, the alleged protagonist, is the Basterd with the least screen-time. Furthermore, the director favors long dialogue scenes (the spectacular opening, of course, as well as the La Louisiane section) over action, although the latter is pretty visceral when it shows up: blood, dismemberment and a cheeky comment about Donny Donowitz's (Roth, in a surprisingly good role) habit of beating the enemy to death with a baseball bat being the closest these guys get to going to the movies. That thin line between absolute horror and pitch-black humor is best exemplified by the Landa character, a creation so astounding Tarantino has said he wouldn't have made the movie if he hadn't found the right actor. Fortunately he found the Austrian Waltz, who justly won the Best Actor award in Cannes and deserves several more for his chilling yet immensely entertaining portrayal of a man capable of delivering eloquent speeches in four different languages (another bold move on the director's part: half of the film is subtitled) and coldly murdering innocent people with the same ease. If you put him and Jules Winnfield from Pulp Fiction in the same room, it would be one hell of a battle of wits.
And what about QT's blatant love for all kinds of cinema? It's there, perhaps even more prominently than ever before: the soundtrack pays countless homages to Ennio Morricone, who was meant to score the film at one point (the tribute includes a highly ironic use of Morricone's theme from The Battle of Algiers, whose documentary-like realism is the polar opposite of Tarantino's many deliberate excesses), most of the characters' names (most notably Mike Myers' hilarious Ed Fenech) are based on revered B-movie stars (what else?), Brad Pitt is obviously goofing around with his celebrity image, and the entire, outrageous final chapter takes place in a movie theater (plus the comment about Donowitz earlier on). Additionally, Tarantino has inserted a couple of clever in-jokes at the expense of his own universe, with a discussion about the principles of a Mexican stand-off (which occurs during an actual stand-off), scenes that mirror similar ones from his previous films and vocal cameos by people like Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel.
Sure, some might object to the joyously OTT nature of the whole thing, not least the final line which will certainly be used by detractors to prove that Tarantino is just a self-centered, cocky geek. That may be the case, but given Inglourious Basterds is a shamelessly and intelligently entertaining piece of cinema, not to mention QT's funniest and most accomplished work since Pulp Fiction, that kind of conclusion is the perfect icing on a delicious cake that true fans will want to eat over and over again.