Vengeance, Tarantino Style

Rating: 8/10 (19 December 2009)

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is a romp that takes a bit of horrendous history and makes an entertaining film about it. For those who admire the strangely off kilter Quentin Tarantino's films, this may just appeal as his best and fanciest production yet. It is a way over the top story about revenge as carefully served out by Jewish American soldiers known as Inglourious Basterds on the Nazis who during the occupation of France sought out and murdered thousands of Jews. This may sound like a grim topic for an entertaining film, but in Tarantino's hands it becomes not only a grisly look at reality but also an at times hilarious parody.
The cast is almost secondary to the story: Brad Pitt as the leader Lt Aldo Raine sports a scarred throat and a somewhat tiresome Tennessee accent but seems to enjoy every grisly moment of his command to have all members of his division gather 100 scalps from the Nazi killers; Denis Menochet provides a sensitive opening as the French father who is hiding Jews (namely one Shosanna Dreyfus- MÃ©lanie Laurent - whose escape from her family's slaughter begins the lead seed for the story ahead), Mike Myers portraying a German parody as only he can, Daniel BrÃ¼hl, Marin Wuttke as a pitch perfect Hitler, B.J. Novak as Pitt's sidekick, Sylvester Groth as Goebbels, etc. But the crowning actor in this film is the amazingly gifted Christoph Waltz as the multilingual, sinister, smarmy, yet elegant Col. Hans Landa who drives this wild tale to its grisly conclusion.
As with all Tarantino films this is not a film for the faint of heart, but it is surprising how entertaining this sprawling story is in his hands. It goes on a bit long and is chocked full of grisly incidents, but it is fine film making.
Grady Harp