Alternate Reality

Rating: 6/10 (10 January 2014)

Set in occupied France during World War 2 an ingenious German SS Officer named "Colonel Hans Landa" (Christoph Waltz) is extremely busy tracking down Jews to send to the concentration camps. And he is very successful at his job. Realizing that something needs to be done the allies form a small group of Jewish enlistees and assign "Lieutenant Aldo Raine" (Brad Pitt) to lead them behind enemy lines to carry out guerrilla tactics and inflict as much damage upon the German army as possible. But Lt. Raine has another objective as well. Being part Apache he tells his men to collect the scalps of all those they kill to spread fear into the enemy. Now, rather than divulge the rest of the story and possibly ruin the film for those who haven't seen it I will just say that this was a very unique movie. While it has a World War 2 framework it doesn't adhere to actual history. It's definitely alternate reality. Be that as it may, I especially liked the performances of Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz. Likewise, having three beautiful actresses in Melanie Laurent (as "Shosanna"), Diane Kruger ("Bridget von Hammersmark") and Julie Dreyfus ("Francesca Mondino") certainly didn't hurt the film either. However, while I thought the character chosen to play "Joseph Goebbels" (Sylvester Groth) was quite realistic, I thought Martin Wuttke wasn't nearly as credible in his role as "Adolf Hitler". He seemed too young and excitable. I also didn't care for the ending at all. Even so, I liked the movie overall and I rate it as slightly above average.