Inglourious Basterds Review

If you've ever seen a Quentin Tarantino film, you know you can describe them in many ways, but one adjective that never applies is "subtle".  His latest, Inglourious Basterds, suffers no lapses in that department.  What it is, though, is pretty good revisionist history entertainment.

Seeming to take at least some of his inspiration from spaghetti westerns, in particular The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, Tarentino has re-created history as we would like to have seen it, a WWII with the Germans afraid of the Jews, and for good reason.  I mean, let's face it, the one group of people you can relentlessly slaughter in a movie and raise the objection of no one is the Nazis.  Or, as Indiana Jones so famously said of them, "I hate those guys."

Inglourious Basterds opens to the beautiful scenery of the French countryside in 1941.  The occupied French countryside, and more specifically at the home of a dairy farmer, Pierre LaPadite (Denis Menochet) and his three lovely daughters.  Soon he comes face to face with Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), better known as "The Jew Hunter", who is there to question him about an unaccounted for local Jewish Family.   Because they don't call him "The Jew Hunter" for no reason, Landa soon finds the missing family through his unique interrogation of LaPadite.  Now, most movies featuring different nationalities cheat and just have everyone speak English, often with the accent of their native country.  Not Tarantino.  He begins the film with all parties speaking their native tongue, then gives them a viable excuse to switch to English. Pretty clever. It is this ruse that also allows Landa to expose this hiding family without alerting them, until it is too late for them, of course.   But, he doesn't manage to kill all of them and a teenage girl Shosanna, escapes.  They will meet again.

In the meantime, American 1st Lieutenant Aldo Raine(Brad Pitt)[Aldo Ray, anyone?], a good ole ex-moonshine runnin'  boy from Maynardville, Tennessee, is putting a special ops group together who will be known as "Inglourious Basterds".  Their sole mission?  As the thickly southern accented Raine says, "..we're gonna be doin' one thing and one thing only....killin' NAH-zees".  But that's not all.  Lt. Raine is aka "Aldo the Apache".  The reason for that colorful moniker soon becomes clear.  He orders his men to scalp every Nazi they kill, supplying the good Lt. with 100 Nazi scalps each, 800 in all.  And, every one of the 8 men in his outfit have ample motive to brutalize these German bullies.  The group is made up of Jewish-Americans.

So, this rag-tag band of soldiers is dropped behind enemy lines to strike terror into the hearts of Nazi Germany.  And they succeed, gloriously, or inglouriously.  They are almost like an American Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, except instead of robbing the Nazis of their money, they take their lives. And their scalps.  They become the bane of Hitler himself as they terrorize(ironically they are later referred to as terrorists by Col. Landa) the German Army, always leaving one soldier alive and with a Swastika carved into their forehead to let the rest of them know, "we're comin' for ya".

As more and more Nazis die at the hands of the Basterds a plot is unhatched by the British that, if successful, could wipe out the entire Nazi high command, to include Hitler. British General Fenech (Mike Myers.  Yep, THAT Mike Myers) and Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor) have cooked up this plot involving a turncoat famous German actress, Briget von Hammersmark(Diane Kruger), the Basterds and a Paris cinema selected by the Nazi Joseph Goebbels for the premiere of his latest propaganda film, A Nation's Pride, starring a  young sniper turned actor, Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl).

Unbeknownst to them, the owner of this cinema is cooking up a plot of their own against the Nazis.  And it is strictly for revenge.  So, as the British and the Basterds plot to blow up the cinema during the film, the theater owner plans to burn it down with everyone inside.

THE BOTTOM LINE

Say whatever you will about Quentin Tarentino, the man knows how to churn out unique and entertaining films.  As is oft the case, his direction is frequently over-the-top and the film laced with blood-letting, though I found none of it gratuitous.  The characters are sometimes cartoonish (especially Hitler) but always enjoyable to watch.  On the other hand, he doesn't wholly demonize all German soldiers, taking the opportunity a couple of times to remind us the rank and file were largely scared young men fearfully following orders.  The upper echelon?  Complete monsters deserving of whatever comeuppance they get.

Christoph Waltz is probably deserving of Oscar consideration for his charming yet utterly sinister Waffen-SS officer and Brad Pitt, well, he's proven yet again he deserves to be ranked right up there with our best American actors.  And for every cartoonish portrayal, there are 2 or 3 fine performances.

Where any Quintin Tarantino movie usually excels is dialogue and Inglourious Basterds is no different. In each of the five acts (Tarantino separates them as such), the scripts crackles and moves right along, in-spite of a couple scenes that might be views by some as "slow spots".  Inglourious Basterds (Tarentio hasn't explained the extra "u" in the first word but says he spelled the second "like people say it") isn't perfect but it is very, very entertaining. We all sorta know how the movie is going to end from the very beginning, but Tarantino throws a couple of surprises at us during the climax, so it's not completely predictable. But, it's history as we wish it could have been. The main protagonists are bigger than life and the real bastards finally get what they deserve.  That's more than alright with me. GRADE: A-