The Glorious return of true cinematic excitement!

Rating: 10/10 (30 August 2009)

Perhaps it's partly because I've always been a hugely over-enthusiast and biased Quentin Tarantino fan-boy (I even thought "Death Proof" was brilliant), but I can't fathom how anyone could possibly dislike "Inglorious Bastards". Tarantino's film is a genuine ode to cinema, and not at all a pretentious and personal hobby-project like some people claim, with a marvelously absurd plot & structure and a deeply fascinating cast of characters. "Inglorious Bastards" is the type of motion picture that causes spontaneous adrenalin-rushes inside your body and automatically makes your blood pump faster with its brilliant sequences that are alternatively suspenseful, comical and unbelievably violent. From the teaser trailers and previews we've been seeing months from beforehand, it looked as if this would become a simplistic and insignificant (but nevertheless entertaining) WWII-action flick, but the eventual finished product is a massively surprising epic with style and content that very well could be the most genius movie of the year. Right from the opening chapter, ingeniously titled "Once upon a time in Nazi- occupied France", it's crystal clear that Tarantino's amazing talent for writing dialogs hasn't vanished yet (in spite of what QT-haters claim) and that he even improved his skills regarding the building up of tension and atmosphere. Together with his talented eye for acting talent and exact casting (the relatively unknown Austrian actor Christoph Waltz depicts the ultimate Nazi villain in the history of War movies); the intro grows out to an intense and mesmerizing 15 minutes long verbal cat-and-mouse game ending in sheer terror. The next chapters are definitely more light-headed and marvelously over-the-top with the introduction of the titular bastards, the film-within-film plot about a German private who single-handedly slaughtered half an army and Joseph Goebbels turning his adventures into a propaganda movie, the hilarious preparations for a well-planned assassination attack and the return of an orphaned Jewish girl with her mind set on vengeance. The bastards are unquestionably the main attraction of the movie. They're a battalion composed of Jewish soldiers and one lunatic German deserter. Under the command of the pleasantly deranged Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt in an amusing role), they prowl around the occupied French countryside and sadistically kill & scalp Nazi officers wherever they can. This concept is vintage Tarantino, with borrowed ideas from great War movie classics, psychopathic character drawings (for example the Bear Jew with his baseball bat), hilariously witty dialogs and anecdotes and extreme uncompromising violence.
"Inglorious Bastards" is a non-stop series of brilliant sequences and unforgettable little trivia details. I could easily list fantastic moments throughout five whole pages, like the use of David Bowie's song "Cat People" and the Strudel scene inside a French restaurant, but the principal message is to just go and watch this film! Only Tarantino could take a serious topic and setting like WWII and turn it into a darkly comical fantasy with absurd twists and a downright demented climax in which practically the entire Third Reich becomes exterminated in one massive shootout. Like always, Tarantino playfully messes around with the fixed values of cinema. Usually WWII movies stick close to the facts and alter the characters' names, but here the names of all Nazi commanders are maintained but the events are completely fictional. Still, and I truly hope that all the negative minded Tarantino critics will finally realize this as well, our director respects and pays attention to little important details like languages and cultural differences. The Germans speak German, the French speak French and the Americans mock the Europeans regarding all the typical clichés. Everything about "Inglorious Bastards" is brilliant and this will undoubtedly become another Tarantino movie that I plan to watch and re- watch numerous of times.