World War II, Tarantino style!

Rating: 7/10 (1 September 2009)

Inglorious Bastards is being marketed incorrectly. Commercials, trailers, etc. make this seem like it is primarily a Brad Pitt vehicle, featuring a team of eight soldiers hunting Nazis in a two hour action packed film. But Brad Bitt and the Basterds is only what half the film is about, if even that much, and the teammates are the least interesting characters in the film, with the exception of Sgt. Stiglitz. The movie does not even feature that much action, yet Inglorious Basterds is one of the most entertaining and suspenseful movies I've seen all summer. The conversations in this movie generate more suspense than all of the action scenes in Transformers 2 or Terminator Salvation combined.
The opening scene is one of the best Tarantino has ever done; we are introduced to the film's main antagonist, Col. Hans Landa, played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz. Nicknamed "The Jew Hunter," Landa is on a mission to locate Jews that are in hiding throughout France. He is very polite to the owner of a Milk Farm, but from the moment he starts talking, we know something is not quite right. His politeness makes our hearts race, to the point where we are almost relieved when he finally cuts to the chase! Waltz plays one of the most memorable and unique villains in recent years and deserves a place near the top of Tarantino's bad guys, right up there with David Carradine. He can be a gentleman, or the most impolite man you have ever met. He can be serious or hilarious. Intelligent, or insane. There is a lot of talk about an Oscar nomination, and he deserves it.
The other half of Basterds revolves around a Jewish girl who escaped Col. Landa, Shosanna Dreyfuss, and opened a small movie theater. Shosanna, played by Melanie Laurent, is another intriguing character. She is given the opportunity to eliminate the leadership of the Third Reich when a German war hero convinces Joseph Goebbels to show his latest propaganda film in her theater. She concocts a scheme to burn down the theater with highly flammable nitrate film in the middle of the movie, just before showing her own personal message to the Nazis. The Bastards just happen to get the same idea, only they want to use dynamite, and that is how the two stories coincide in the third act. With the help of German Actress and spy Diane Kruger, they learn that Hitler himself will be attending the premiere.
Brad Pitt is hilarious as Aldo Rayne, and the majority of the cast is top notch, particularly the European cast members. The dialog is the most entertaining part of the film, not unusual for Tarantino. If I had to pick another star in this film besides Waltz, Melanie Laurent would be it. She is the character we really root for the most, given her personal history with the Nazis. Tarantino had many influences besides the 1978 original Italian film with the same name. It is sort of a mix between a World War II film and a Spaghetti Western, featuring great Ennio Morricone music, which naturally invites comparisons to Kill Bill. The violence is not as severe as I thought it would be, but the acts of violence committed by the Basterds are undoubtedly war crimes, from the scalping of German soldiers to the killing of civilians. I am not sure if Tarantino intended this, but it raises the question of whether war crimes can be justified even if they are used to defeat an "evil empire." This question does not damper the fun, however. Basterds is one fun ride, through and through.