Inglourious Basterds

Plot synopsis:
Chapter One: "Once Upon a Time..... in Nazi-Occupied France"The film opens in 1941 with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a detective of the Waffen-SS, proudly known as the "Jew Hunter," visiting French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Ménochet). After making casual conversation in French and taking a glass of LaPadite's delicious milk, Landa claims to have exhausted his French and asks to switch to English.In English, Landa then notes that his papers state that all of the Jewish families around LaPadite's region have been accounted for, except the Dreyfuses, who have vanished completely in the past year. Landa believes that someone is hiding them very well. After rambling on a bit about the logic he uses to hunt Jews, he admits that he is required to conduct a thorough search of LaPadite's house.By dropping a subtle hint about whether or not to leave LaPadite's family alone in the future, Landa manages to coerce LaPadite and get him to confess that he is hiding the Dreyfuses under the floorboards. LaPadite points out the approximate location of the hidden Dreyfuses. Landa understands that the Dreyfuses don't speak English, and tells LaPadite that he will be switching back to French. In French, he thanks LaPadite for the milk and hospitality, then opens the door, seemingly calling out to LaPadite's family, but in actuality to booted Wehrmacht soldiers, who come inside and take up positions. On Landa's orders, the soldiers fire their guns into the floorboards, killing the Dreyfuses. However, Landa hears a noise, and sees the teenage Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) running away into the hills. Landa considers shooting her with his pistol but decides against it, yelling after her, "Au revoir, Shosanna!"Chapter Two: "Inglourious Basterds"The second chapter takes place three years later in 1944, just prior to the Allied invasion of France. We see redneck Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) addressing in formation his newly formed eight-man Jewish-American commando unit. He proceeds to explain to them, in drill sergeant style, that they will be dropped behind enemy lines to cause havoc to all Nazi soldiers they come across with the goal of bringing fear into the heart of the enemy. He further explains to them that the normal standards of military conduct will not apply because the Nazis themselves have no humanity and are not deserving of any humanity in return. He mentions that he has Apache blood running through his veins and that each and every one of the men in his command owes him a debt of 100 Nazi scalps.We next cut to a scene showing us the terrible-tempered Adolf Hitler (Martin Wuttke), angrily ridiculing two of his military command for not being able to deal with the Basterds, as their activities are demoralizing to his fighting men. Hitler then interviews Private Butz (Sönke Möhring), whose entire patrol was recently ambushed and killed by the Basterds, and he was the only survivor. When Hitler asks Butz if they marked him like they did the other survivors, Butz shows him the swastika carved into his forehead.Butz's story is told in flashback: all of the soldiers have already been killed except for three: Butz, Sgt. Werner Rachtman (Richard Sammel), and a third soldier. Raine has Rachtman come forward, and threatens to have him killed if he does not disclose the whereabouts and information on a nearby Nazi patrol. Rachtman is adamant that he will not provide information that could possibly harm other German soldiers and Raine calls for Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), known to German soldiers as the "Bear Jew" to beat Rachtman to death with a baseball bat, which he proceeds to do, which very much delights all of the Basterds. The second survivor is also shot dead in a moment of excitement.Raine then interrogates the non-English speaking Private Butz. Cpl. Willem Wicki (Gedeon Burkhard) acts as their interpreter. Utterly demoralized by the beating to death of his sergeant, Private Butz quickly provides the Basterds with all they need to know after which Lt. Raine lets Private Butz go - but not before carving a swastika into Butz's forehead with his own customized Bowie knife - as a branding (swastika carving is Lt. Raine's trademark). The scene ends with Donowitz commenting to Raine that he is becoming quite good at carving swastikas. Lt. Raine responds: "You know how you get to Carnegie Hall don't ya? Practice."Chapter Three: "German Night in Paris"June 1, 1944: Shosanna has assumed the identity of "Emmanuelle Mimieux." How she manages to do so is not revealed. She has also become the proprietress of a cinema in downtown Paris, which is chosen by Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a spotlight-hungry sniper-turned-actor whose exploits are being celebrated in the Nazi propaganda film Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride), as the setting for the film premiere. He is infatuated with Shosanna and convinces Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to hold the premiere in her cinema. Shosanna, however, does not reciprocate Zoller's feelings.Shosanna realizes that the presence of so many high ranking Nazi officials and officers provides an excellent opportunity for revenge. She resolves to burn down the cinema using the massive quantities of flammable nitrate film she holds in storage during the premiere (because nitrate film burns three times faster than paper, and is cheaper than buying lots of explosives; the English narrator (Samuel L. Jackson) tells us that the flammability of nitrate film was such so that you couldn't even take a reel on a bus), and she and her lover/assistant Marcel re-edit the fourth reel of "Stolz der Nation."Chapter Four: "Operation Kino"In the meantime, the British have also learned of the Nazi leadership's plan to attend the premiere and dispatch a British officer, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), to Paris to lead Operation Kino, an attack on the cinema with the aid of the Basterds and a German double agent, an actress by the name of Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger). Hicox meets with General Ed Fenech (Mike Myers) and Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor) and is chosen for the mission based on his expertise of German filmmakers.Bridget Von Hammersmark arranges to meet Hicox and two of the Basterds, Wicki and the psychotic Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) (who defected from the Germans after killing thirteen Gestapo in violent ways {some of which can be viewed in Chapter 2}) in the basement of a French tavern to arrange their plans. The only problem is that the night of the rendezvous is also the occasion of a German staff sergeant named Wilhelm (Alexander Fehling) celebrating the birth of his son with his soldier comrades. One of the German soldiers present strikes up a conversation with Hicox and notices that his accent is "odd." An SS Major, Dieter Hellstrom (August Diehl) (whom we met earlier during Chapter 3), who is in the tavern as well also notices the odd accent (although Hicox is fluent in German, he is using his British accent). Hellstrom joins Hicox and von Hammersmark and plays one round of a guessing game with them (with Hellstrom's card, King Kong). He offers to buy the table a round of drinks. Unfortunately, Hicox betrays himself when he gives the wrong three-fingered order for whiskey (holding up his ring, middle, and pointer fingers instead of his thumb, pointer finger, and middle finger), and the SS officer recognizes their deception.Hicox, Wicki, Stiglitz, and all of the Germans, as well as the French tavern owner, subsequently kill each other in the resulting 15 second shootout: Stiglitz starts things off by telling Hellstrom to say "auf Wiedersehen" to his Nazi balls, then shoots him in his groin. Hellstrom then shoots Hicox in turn and hits Bridget in her right leg, who falls backward in her chair, while Hicox falls backward and returns fire at Hellstrom. Stiglitz then stands up and repeatedly stabs Hellstrom in the back of the head, pinning his head to the table. Wicki stands up and shoots Winnetou in the back at least twice. Beethoven shoots Stiglitz in the back. Mata Hari shoots Wicki in the stomach. Stiglitz turns and shoots Beethoven four times in the torso and then also shoots Edgar Wallace in the heart, killing them both. Wicki shoots Mata Hari in the heart. Then, Eric shoots Stiglitz with a double-barreled shotgun, killing him. Wicki shoots Eric in the head. Wilhelm blindly guns down Wicki and Mathilda with his MP40 submachine gun. Just then, Raine and several of the Basterds arrive (having waited outside the tavern and now alerted by the shooting), and a standoff ensures between them and Wilhelm. After Wilhelm agrees to surrender to the Basterds, Bridget retrieves Hicox's pistol and fires four shots at Wilhelm, killing him, because Wilhelm had learned that Bridget was working for the enemy. The wounded Bridget allows herself to be captured by Raine and the Basterds.A little later, Raine angrily interrogates Bridget at a local animal clinic where he takes her for medical treatment for her bullet wound. He pokes a finger into the wound to make her explain the debacle in the tavern, and then tell him about Operation Kino. Raine decides to continue the operation against the cinema. Raine picks two of his best men, Donowitz and Omar Ulmer (Omar Doom), to make use of suicide bombs and the three of them will pose as Italian filmmakers escorting Bridget to the event. To explain the cast on her leg, Bridget will claim to have broken it in a mountain-climbing accident.Colonel Landa, who is now an SD officer, investigates the carnage at the French pub and finds one of Bridget von Hammersmark's shoes left behind and also an autographed napkin which Bridget had signed for Wilhelm's son, realizing that she was there and may have been wounded. He also identifies the bodies of the two German-born Basterds, noting their reputation to disguise themselves as German soldiers to ambush squads.Chapter Five: "Revenge of the Giant Face"The following evening, Landa approaches Bridget and Raine in the cinema lobby and is able to easily see through their disguises, as Raine, Donowitz, and Ulmer cannot speak fluent Italian or German (Raine is most obvious since he is speaking it with a thick Southern accent). He questions Bridget alone and makes her try on the shoe he had retrieved from the tavern. It is a perfect fit. He strangles and kills her as a traitor, and orders the arrest of Raine. As Raine is driven off in a truck, he discovers one of his men, Private Utivich (B.J. Novak), has also been captured and is in the truck with him.Landa reveals himself to be a turncoat. While speaking with Raine and Utivich in the privacy of a closed restaurant, he tells them that four major Nazi leaders must all be killed to end the terrible war immediately. They are all attending Nation's Pride, and he is prepared to let the assassination continue... for a price. He has no intention of helping end the war only to be tried by a Jewish tribunal for war crimes and end up facing execution. In order to help end the war, he wants to make a deal; one Raine cannot authorize, but his commanding officer (voice of Harvey Keitel) can. Landa has his radio operator help Raine reach his general, where Landa states the terms of his deal: he wants full military pension and benefits under his current rank, the Congressional Medal of Honor for everyone involved in the operation, American citizenship and a home on Nantucket Island. He also reveals that he had planted Raine's explosives in Hitler's box at the cinema (which is shown in flashback), indicating that there are now three attempts against Hitler's life (Donowitz and Omar in the main theater, the explosives in Hitler's box, and Shoshanna's plot). Raine is placed on the radio and his general tells him that Landa and his radio operator will drive him and Utivich in a truck to American lines, then surrender to them, whereupon Raine will drive the truck the rest of the way to base and bring Landa and the operator to him for debriefing.Meanwhile, during the showing of Nation's Pride, Shosanna and her assistant (and lover) Marcel (Jacky Ido) are manning the projection booth when he tells her it is time. It is revealed in a flashback to a few days ago which shows Marcel filming a close-up of Shosanna's face making a speech in English. They then force a local camera shop owner to develop the film by threatening to kill him and his family if he doesn't, and Shosanna edits the complete film on the fourth and final film reel of the movie and leaves them in the projection booth for them to run when the time is right.Flashing back to the present, Marcel tells Shosanna that he needs to lock the auditorium and go behind the screen. As Marcel makes his way toward the auditorium, the two Basterds that have been left behind, Donowitz and Omar Ulmer, leave their seats and exit the auditorium heading upstairs to the balcony level... determined to kill Hitler by themselves (neither of them are aware of Raine's capture or of Shosanna's plan to burn down the cinema with all of them inside). Donowitz carefully spies on the two guards watching the entrance to Hitler's opera box from the nearest restroom.Shosanna loads the doctored fourth reel of Nation's Pride onto the projector camera as Marcel locks the auditorium doors, sliding the safety locks at the tops and bottoms of the doors into place, and then slides a heavy iron crowbar through the door handles, further barring them. He steps behind the screen where Shosanna had placed her entire stack of flammable nitrate film. Shosanna pulls a lever to switch the projector to the doctored reel on a cue symbol in the film. Watching from behind the screen, Marcel lights up a cigarette and waits.Meanwhile, Zoller, who is uncomfortable with the way he is portrayed killing Americans in the film, leaves the cinema auditorium and makes his way to the projectionist's room to flirt with Shosanna. She is deeply concerned at his intrusion and tells him to leave. However, the spurned Zoller pushes his way into the room and angrily confronts Shosanna about her treatment of him, warning her that she's no longer in a position to disrespect him. Needing to get Zoller out of the way, she asks him to lock the door, dropping a subtle hint: "we don't have much time." Soon as Zoller's back is turned to her, she pulls out a small gun from her purse and shoots him in the back, mortally wounding him. Quickly she glances into the auditorium to make sure she wasn't heard. Suddenly, she hears Zoller groan and realizes he's still alive. In an apparent moment of pity, she turns him over, and he shoots her to death before he succumbs to his wounds.At the same time, Donowitz and Ulmer are preparing their ambush to take out the opera box guards. Donowitz disguises himself as a waiter delivering a glass of champagne. The ambush goes off without a hitch and they kill both guards and then steal their machine guns.Meanwhile, we see Hitler greatly enjoying the battle scene in the movie, where Zoller is taking out numerous American soldiers by himself. But his joy comes to a quick end when Zoller's challenge in the movie ("Who wants to send a message to Germany?") is answered with the changes Shosanna made to the fourth reel. The large image of Shosanna's face appears on the screen and she tells the audience (speaking in heavily accented English for the first and only time in the movie) that they're all going to die, and she is a Jew ready to take revenge. On her cue, Marcel flicks his cigarette into the pile of nitrate film behind the screen, igniting it. The fire bursts through the screen, causing pandemonium in the auditorium. Just then, Donowitz and Ulmer burst into Hitler's box and gun down Hitler, Goebbels, Goebbels's secretary and French translator Francesca Mondino (Julie Dreyfus) and the other Nazi leaders. As the cinema is engulfed in flames, Donowitz and Ulmer fire randomly into the crowd below them, who are attempting to flee, but escape is impossible, as the auditorium doors are now locked and barred. Finally, the dynamite that Landa had planted in Hitler's box, as well as the dynamite strapped to the Basterds' legs, now goes off. The cinema is destroyed in the subsequent inferno, killing everybody inside.The next day, Landa and his radio operator set off with Raine and Utivich towards the American lines in Normandy, as part of the deal he had made with Raine's commanding officer. At the American lines, he surrenders to Raine and hands over his gun and sword. Raine orders Utivich to handcuff Landa, and suddenly shoots the driver dead, ordering Utivich to scalp him over Landa's outraged protest. Raine reveals that while he appreciates Landa's underhanded deal and all the perks he's secured for himself, he is incensed that on arriving in America, Landa intended to take off his SS uniform and blend in to the American populace, with nobody remembering all the heinous deeds he committed as a Nazi officer. Raine plans to remedy that. The film ends with Raine carving a swastika into Landa's forehead and declaring to Utivich that it may just be his "masterpiece."

Tags: comedy, boring, suspenseful, murder, cult, violence, historical fiction, flashback, action, satire, humor, romantic, revenge, alternate history, sadist

Review:
Having seen the trailers i had high hopes but had doubts due to a string of self indulgent films (c'mon lets be honest, self indulgence is his tarantinos middle name)I was surprised to find though that he had pulled the cat out of the bag with this one.
Diane Kruger makes a credible Barbara Bouchet (one of Tarantino's muses from trash action Italian movies from the 70's) and the rest of the cast has some exquisite touches like Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill.
I love Reservoir Dogs, admire Pulp Fiction and think that Jackie Brown is Tarantino's most mature piece of film-making - technically his most superior - including the last great performance elicited from Robert De Niro.
I figured it would be worth enduring to hear him in Q&A as i know from interviews how entertaining he can be in person.So little was i prepared for the sheer exuberant fun and brilliance of Inglourious Basterds.Easily Mr Tarantino's best work since Jackie Brown it is a triumph.Yes the references are there but they do not interfere with the story, they are not the driving force.
While i admired Mr Tarantino for using stuntwoman Zoe Bell as herself in Death Proof in order to amp-up the exhilaration of the major stunt scene her lack of any acting ability in a key role was a problem for the film.
He is Mifune's blustering samurai in Yojimbo, he is Robards Cheyenne from Once Upon a Time in the West, there is a very James Coburn vibe to him, and of course a suitably Lee Marvin edge.Christoph Waltz (who i did not previously known) and Melanie Laurent (who i first noticed in a brilliant French-language British short film by Sean Ellis) are sensational and i expect to see both used a lot more in the future.
Only Mike Myers comes close to tipping the wink and pushing it too far but his scene is reigned in just enough - with the help of a fantastic Michael Fassbender who seems pulled directly from the mold of Attenborough's Great Escape leader.All the actors shine and Tarantino throws in wonderful flourishes, but ones that work with the story.
After a sensational slow-burn opening and a glorious intro to those inglourious Basterds the pace never lets up and over two and half hours flies by.It also looks beautiful, marking this as a return to real film-making rather than just self-indulgent silliness.
But, if I'm mentioning this instead of talking about all the great things I could be saying about his movie is because there is a strange force trying to brain wash me into believing that Tarantino is the most important influence in movies since time immemorial.
Outside a brilliant sun is shining, but in the one room of the house, everything is bathed in shadows and black.It is a brilliant setting for an interrogation by Waltz, as the "Jew Hunter" of the SS, who dangles his host French farmer over the precipice of revealing what he cannot reveal numerous times, then pulls him back with obsequious lines of friendship and understanding.A second sadistic German, well-played by August Diehl, later functions as important actor in the final plot twist.
Diehl's Nazi Major, who has an ear for German accents, is almost as good as Waltz....almost.Film classes will study much from this movie.
Tarantino knows just how long to draw out a scene, building suspense in the manner of Hitchcock, then at just the breaking point, suddenly coming to a resolution.For color, look for a final shot at a French Theater, where its secretly Jewish proprietor is staging a surprise for the upper reaches of Nazi leadership.We see her, played by Melanie Laurent, awaiting the hated German dignataries who will arrive for a film preview of the latest Deutsch film masterpiece, a propaganda piece about a German hero and his dubious accomplishments.Laurent is framed on a balcony, reflected in the glass mirrors of the gorgeous theater, her red lips and low cut dress reflecting everywhere the intensity of her designs on her guests.
You'll have a great time with Brad Pitt and an incredible Christoph Waltz as the ultimate Nazi villain but don't expect a masterpiece as declared by some critics.
Even more rarely do I clap at the end of a movie, this I and everyone else in the theater did.I have to say I am a little biased towards Quentin, I grew up with "Pulp Fiction." I watched it when I was 12 and it is still my favorite and most influential film.However, since then Quentin has not really lived up to his billing.
That is until "Inglorious Basterds." What Quentin did was exactly what was needed for the war genre, a spaghetti western feel that could only be done by Tarantino or Sergio Leone, but seeing how Leone is dead, Tarantino's the self appointed guy on this masterpiece.So let's look at the movie which I won't give away.
Not to mention this movie was set up in the classic Tarantino mold, great scenes of rich meaningful dialog and sudden shocking action.The acting was superb!!
Usually Tarantino makes not too bad movies with ridiculous violence scenes - but now?
The whole movie looks like a dumb army propaganda video.Every normal human should see, that the actions of the "heroes" are in no way better then those of the "enemies".
Revenge and justice seem to be the main themes, From the start of the movie one feels compassion towards the victims of the Nazis, and is placed in Tarantino's fictional dimension of the WW2 historical context.
But the movie is so good, that during the North American Inglorious Basterds premiere at the Fantasia Festival in Montreal, i had to pee, but refused to go so as to not miss one single scene.
Here, however, the legions of the good are apparently headed by a fellow playing a Cherokee descended country bumpkin who wants nothing more than to kill Nazis and who has, as a right hand man, a deranged Bostonian Jew who beats people to death while babbling about the Red Sox, for reasons I was never clear about.
The Nazis were not Neanderthals who dined on the blood of babies every evening, they were among the most civilized people that the world had to offer at the time.The lunatics in this film are, in large part, Americans and, in particular, Jewish Americans.
The scene where his bluff of being an Italian should have been called, but for some weird reason is not, is absolutely laughable, but nevertheless not funny.We were a bunch of guys watching that movie and none, seriously none liked it.
When I wasn't rolling my eyes at the ridiculous scenes of violence, I was yawning at the drawn out conversations, and the obvious efforts that went into 'building tension.' I cannot believe that so many people have raved on about how great this film is, when it is one of the worst films ever made.
This movie was so bad that after years of using IMDb, I finally registered purely to write this comment.Crap doesn't begin to describe it.The most compelling evidence yet as to why Hollywood should be banned from making war movies.French and German are used as if trying to give some vague impression that Tarantino isn't completely full of "unchecked ego" - I would think that paying more attention to the plot and actual history would have been wise if I'd wanted to retain some semblance of accuracy - otherwise, sod it - why not have all characters speak English for the US audience (let's face it, no one else will be watching this)?
I'm not even that bothered by Hollywood's usual bending/rewriting/falsification of history for it's own ends - we all expect that - American hero, European baddies (at best numpties) - but this wasn't just unresearched childish adventure rubbish, but also cinematically juvenile - no subtlety, no nuance, just clumsy - like someone handed a 12 year old a camera and said, "Make a film about WWII - let you imagination run wild".What is cinema coming to when people rate this rubbish?.
There are a myriad of films that portray World War II in a fanciful light, but "Inglorious Basterds" is one of the few that I can recall that uses the extermination of the Jews as a launching pad for an outlandish Sam Peckenpaugh -inspired cartoon which depicts historical figures like Adolph Hitler and Joseph Goebbels - monsters who were responsible for the murder of millions of people - on the same level as Lex Luthor or The Joker.Brad Pitt and his crew of seemingly invincible marauders cut through the German lines with such ease that it's a wonder that the war lasted as long as it did, and with such a sadistic bloodthirstiness that they seemed likely subjects for a war crimes trial at the conflict's end.
Tarantino crudely and artlessly tries to take the narrative between their bloody and far-fetched "heroics" and more genuine atrocities suffered by victims of the Nazis, so the line between Tarantino's outlandish fairy tale and the real-life horrors of the Holocaust are blurred to a degree that made me feel like the director was exploiting the brutal death of six million people in order to splash a lot of cool, fake blood on a movie set.
In the same film he can introduce a character by throwing a title onto the screen as if this member of the "Basterds" was cool enough to have his own movie, or play a 1980's David Bowie song while a woman prepares to do battle in her own way while Nazi flags hang outside the window.The movie takes place in an alternate universe that could either be a dream or the unreality of the grind-house era Tarantino has celebrated in Kill Bill and, well, Grindhouse.
The sex scene in the middle of the film is a perfect gauge of how demented, perverted, and gross Tarintino is.I enjoyed "Pulp Fiction", I even thought "Jackie Brown" was mildly entertaining - but just to create a pathetic movie, slap your so-called artistic genius on it, with an "A" list actor, does not make a movie Oscar worthy.This movie is like Mexican food.
If he wants to make some sort of what if historic film better do it with something that wasn't so dramatic and involved so many suffering and death.A film where people laugh at every shot like if they were a moronic audience in the US in the present??.An African as a projectionist in Paris under Nazi rule (???).He probably arrived Paris after Senegal independence.
The only thing that made the two and a half hours viewing bearable was the amount of wine i was drinking.If Tarantino has to resort to parodies, homages, ripping off old theme music ( did anyone else remember the music from "Kelly's Heroes" used in the cinema scene near the end ?) and boring us all S***less with pointless dialogues in foreign languages that neither enhance the characters or stories, I suggest he quits now.There is little character development, totally over the top violence (meaningless), a preposterous story, wooden acting (pitt in particular), Continuity errors a-plenty and holes in the script that you could drive a Nazi staff car through.When is he going to get it through his head that he doesn't have Carte Blanche to do what ever the hell he wants with a new offering just because "Reservoir Dogs" and "Pulp Fiction" broke new ground in the early 90's ?
If a film isn't credible or entertaining then the audience is being conned, pure and simple.Having watched Quentin Tarantino descend from the most original film maker around to someone who churns out crap like "death Proof" and "Inglorious Basterds" I can honestly say that I'm not going to give him another chance with my viewing money.I suggest he takes his head out of his posterior and remembers that the viewing public will one day bury him if this shameless self indulgence continues..
And like with Death Proof, there is far too little pay off to warrant stealing people's time and attention over these all-heard-before and talky routines.Through most of the duration of the film I contemplated suggesting to my friend, who was clearly not being entertained either, to leave, but I decided to see it through till the end.
Of course not it focused 100% on jews and they are the one and only we must feel sorry for, once again as all you can expect from American films.This has been called a "Jewish revenge movie".
So rather than this ("yeah jews torture and murder those Germans yeah thats what they deserve!") how about a movie like Schindlers list but instead set in occupied Palestine and showing the suffering of the people there today?!
Well what a crap movie.I liked Pulp Fiction, but Tarantino is nothing more that a pretentious penis head, and in my opinion, quite talentless.I cant believe the majority of the movie consists of mind numbing, pointless, extended dialog......yawn.Brad Pitt was terrible, absolutely terrible.The whole story was laughable, and was Hitler supposed to be funny?
Tarantinos only good film was Pulp Fiction.I hated Inglorious Basterds..
After finally getting round to seeing the movie I can put my hand on my heart and say I didn't miss all that much It's interesting that so many professional critics agreed that the best thing about the film was Christoph Waltz performance * and that this was qualified by the critics saying stuff along the lines of " I found my interest waning when Waltz wasn't on screen " .
There's certainly very little action to the movie and most of the film is composed of characters sitting down and talking in German or French or English .
Little of importance happens in the narrative except to illustrate the film's own underserved self importance * Strangely enough when DJANGO UNCHAINED was released the critics once again praised Waltz as being the best thing about the movie .
Let me just say, I am a fan of Tarantino but this film is making me wonder if that will continue.Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction had humour, style and shock.
"Inglorious Basterds" is INDEED inglorious and reflects the shame of a nation.If you want to see a well written, sophisticated, thinking, well acted, uplifting movie about World War 2, go back to "Casablanca" which was actually created during a generation that actually FOUGHT a war against the Nazis - and won - instead of creating sadistic fantasies about it.
It has a laundry list of stuff it did wrong; The suspense scenes went on way to long, there was usually no point to all the violence, it made me feel bad for the nazi's (thats a first), Diane Kruger in 2 scenes then gets killed, shitty ending, stupid plot line with the nazi guy and the french theatre owner, terrible accents, and Brad Pitt doing nothing and saying nothing importent for 2 hours.
Even though the first scene had some perverse interest, after that I skipped thru it to the end, but still couldn't avoid 1.) Brad Pitt doing one of the worst performances of all time; 2) a whole lot of scalping by the US team, filmed with obvious relish and disgusting detail by the psychopathic director; and 3)a total and extremely boring and unfunny rewrite of history.
Tarantino has never made a movie as good as Pulp Fiction, which I think is genius.
Tarantino has never made a movie as good as Pulp Fiction, which I think is genius.
Actually I'm going to stop there.Im giving this 2 stars - I'd like to give it more because Waltz really was inspiring as the SS officer - I'd even go as far as to say he's almost deserving of an Oscar nomination for best supporting actor if you assume Pitt is the lead.This is a bad film.
"Inglourious Basterds," a title which is stolen from a superior Italian trash flick by Enzo Castellari, is pure pretentious drivel.The opening scene of the movie is the only one which can compare to films from the glory days of Quentin Tarantino.
But, it should then occur to the viewer that the movie we have just watched, Inglorious Basterds, is itself just one of these pointless, war-mongering films with all of the above listed elements.Never have I seen such callous disrespect of a filmmaker for his own audience.
I really wonder what the point of this movie would be if the members of the "Basterds" were not Jew. It is obvious that most of the voters are citizens of the USA and they like to see the USA in the first place all the time and because the directors know this and they want to earn more money they use similar items with similar subjects.
"Saving Private Ryan" would come into that category, not this dreadful mess of a movie.It looks and feels like the writer/director so called has made it up as he goes along as the whole thing is uneven and drifts from drama to farce and various other genres.It is part parody, part fantasy, part black comedy(without being funny)and proved to be a total waste of my time and goodness knows why I did not bother to turn it off sooner.
After seeing many Tarantino films and understanding and enjoying much of his darker humour and intellect, I was hugely disappointed in this movie and the way it was presented.
he first thing you see on the screen in Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a title card that says, "Once upon a time in Nazi- occupied France".
The end of the movie was absolutely terrible as it turned into a complete joke.This film is an abomination for spoiling the history and making a mockery out of people who truly fought to save the world.
This movie is not worth a descend review, it just made me decide that I am not going to go see the next Tarantino film.