Funner than VALKYRIE; sexier than DEFIANCE

Rating: 9/10 (22 August 2009)

Remake, schmeemake, if BASTERDS director Quentin Tarantino is redoing any WWII flick, it is Robert Aldrich's 1967 opus, THE DIRTY DOZEN. Not only are the climactic scenes of these two films virtually identical, but the tongue-in-cheek tone they share is seldom seen in such other recent revisionist WWII movies as SCHINDLER'S LIST (=the "good" mature German), THE BOY IN STRIPED PAJAMAS (=the "good" immature German), VALKYRIE (the "fragging" German), or DEFIANCE (the "fighting" Jews). Tarantino's idea of someone like the Detroit Tigers' WWII era superstar "Hammering Hank" Greenberg, who still holds the major league record for home runs in one season by a Jewish player (58), directing his Louisville slugger skills against the skulls of Nazi storm trooper officers is a flight of fancy reaching the level of poetic justice. The notion that everyone is expendable in a war movie has not been exemplified so well since THE DIRTY DOZEN, either. People who study both of these films will find many other parallels that spell, if not plagiarism, at least outright homage.