Inglourious Basterds Review [2]

Posted by Shawn S. Lealos on 08.23.2009

Quentin Tarantino is back with his long awaited World War II project. Can it possibly live up to the expectations of his fans?

Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Cast
Brad Pitt ... Lt. Aldo Raine
Mélanie Laurent ... Shosanna Dreyfus
Christoph Waltz ... Col. Hans Landa
Eli Roth ... Sgt. Donny Donowitz
Michael Fassbender ... Lt. Archie Hicox
Diane Kruger ... Bridget von Hammersmark
Daniel Brühl ... Fredrick Zoller
Til Schweiger ... Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz
Gedeon Burkhard ... Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki
Jacky Ido ... Marcel
B.J. Novak ... Pfc. Smithson Utivich
Omar Doom ... Pfc. Omar Ulmer
Denis Menochet ... Perrier LaPadite
Sylvester Groth ... Joseph Goebbels
Martin Wuttke ... Adolf Hitler
Mike Myers ... General Ed Fenech
Samuel L. Jackson ... Narrator



In the final scene of Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds, Brad Pitt looks directly at the camera and sneers. His final line of dialogue is simply, “I think I’ve made my masterpiece.” With that line of dialogue the entire cinema I was in broke out in cheers. This is not a movie you should see with stuffy film critics looking to break down everything wrong with a movie. This is not a movie you see in a half empty theater on a warm afternoon. This is a movie you see in a theater filled to the brim with Quentin Tarantino fans. I saw this at a theater fitting that description during the movie’s midnight showing with a loud energetic crowd, and I have not been entertained by a movie like this in a long time. Is this Tarantino’s masterpiece? No, that would still be Pulp Fiction. But if you are a real fan of Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds is the most fun you will have at the movies this year.

Inglourious Basterds is a proto-typical Quentin Tarantino movie. If anyone has paid attention to his career they would know he is a writer first and foremost. This movie has some of the best dialogue he has written since Pulp Fiction. When the film opens we see a title card “Chapter One: Once Upon a Time ... In Nazi Occupied France.” This should tell you everything you need to know about this film. It is a fairy tale, a parable, a story of what might have happened during World War II if the Basterds existed. In much the same way as Pulp Fiction did, there are separate but intercutting stories featuring various characters, but unlike Pulp Fiction everything in this movie collides at the end in an explosive finale.

“Chapter One” is a perfect Tarantino dialogue scene where a dairy farmer is confronted by Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz). Landa is known throughout France as the “Jew Hunter” and at different times shows pride in his nickname or shame depending on who he is speaking. He has been sent on this mission because he is a military man by occupation but prides himself as being a world class detective. He understands to find criminals (or Jews) he doesn’t need to think like a German but instead think like a Jew. The opening conversation with the farmer sets the table for the story as he breaks the man down (with a wonderful analogy on rats) and eventually finds the Jews that have been hiding there. A lot has been said about Brad Pitt’s role as head of the Basterds but without Waltz this movie would fail. Waltz won the Best Actor award at Cannes and should be a shoe-in for a supporting actor nod at the Oscars. He travels through the movie as the main catalyst for every major event and holds his own against everyone Tarantino has cast in the past.

Another man who stepped into Tarantino’s dialogue with great aplomb is Brad Pitt. The man has always been a highly underrated actor but brings the goods when times demand it. He is Lt. Aldo Raine, a southern boy who heads an elite hit squad called the Basterds. They do not take hostages but exist only to kill Nazis. They are very good at it, earning nicknames by Nazis all the way up to Adolph Hitler, who is frustrated at the Nazi inability to catch these men. His accent is, to put it bluntly, hilarious. Every time Pitt opens his mouth you are guaranteed anything from chuckles in the audience to all out laughter. He tackles Tarantino’s dialogue and is the best man to deliver it since John Travolta and Samuel Jackson.

The movie involves a plot to kill all the highest ranking Nazi officials while they are in a movie theater watching the premiere of the latest propaganda film Nation’s Pride. The plan is simple: two Basterds and a British undercover agent will infiltrate the event with double agent and actress Bridget von Hammersmark. They will plant explosives and blow the entire place up. Unbeknownst to them, the venue has been changed because the star of the movie, a war hero turned actor, has developed a crush on a cinema owner named Dreyfus. Dreyfus, the only survivor of the slaughter in the opening scene, has plans of her own to burn the place down with all the Nazis inside. The movie, as with all of Tarantino’s films of the past, is preoccupied with the director’s love of cinema. What other war movie is more concerned with a movie critic, a cinema owner and an actor over the horrors of the Holocaust? That is what makes this movie great.

The dialogue that troubled Death Proof, heavy handed and unable to be clearly enunciated by the weaker actresses, is gravy to these actors. The talk comes easy and it is almost always interesting. There is a scene where the undercover agents are approached by a German officer in a bar and play the celebrity hunt name game with the scene always bearing a hint of danger. While we are listening to the superbly written dialogue, it is as suspenseful as anything Tarantino has ever crafted. There are also “listen or you’ll miss it” moments with an uncredited voice over by Samuel Jackson and a voice on the radio towards the end sounding suspiciously like Harvey Keitel. Only Eli Roth fails in his role and is used to blurt explicatives in the loudest, most over-the-top manner possible. Brad Pitt is hilarious every time he opens his mouth while Eli Roth is not.

Tarantino has always been a master at picking out songs for his soundtracks and for Inglourious Basterds he chooses music from other movies to complete his film, not surprising considering his love for classic cinema. He travels from Ennio Morricone (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) to Dimitri Tiomkin (Rio Bravo) to David Bowie (“Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)”) with style and panache. It is clear from those choices this movie might be more related to western films then the war genre. You would be right because, at its heart, Inglourious Basterds is a spaghetti western dressed in the clothes of a World War II movie. This movie is a hybrid and never fails to entertain anyone with an ear for good, well written dialogue.

When Quentin Tarantino makes a movie you can expect a few things outside the fantastic dialogue I already talked about. Another important trait of a Tarantino film is the smattering of violence and displayed here is more gory and over-the-top than anything we have seen from the man so far. Whether it is the Basterds specialized scalping of Nazis or the brutal fights where anyone, anytime can die, the violence is brutal. This is not the stylistic violence of Kill Bill. It is the cringe worthy, gruesome violence that makes you squirm in your chair if you aren’t groaning out loud at the absurdity of the acts. Tarantino was once ambushed in a televised interview about his on-screen violence, which he believes teenagers love. He holds no punches here and delivers his most violent picture since Reservoir Dogs. The third aspect of a Tarantino film is the “cool factor” and this movie drips with it.

He stops the action on occasion to use over-the-top introductions to characters that you may never see again. Tarantino has no problem giving us a wildly elaborate setup of a character, only to kill him off right after we get to know him. The epitome of coolness is the final scenes. This is a fairy tale. This is not about the Holocaust and this is not a Dirty Dozen movie. This is a Quentin Tarantino production and nothing bears his signature better than the premiere of the movie. Whether it is the Eli Roth directed film within a film intercut with German’s laughing like fools, the Hitchcock styled intercuts showing exactly where the explosives are or the smoky, hallucinogenic face on the movie screen laughing manically behind billowing smoke, this movie is what “cool” is supposed to look like. Is it Tarantino’s masterpiece? Maybe not, but it would be for just about anyone else working in Hollywood today.

The 411: Quentin Tarantino has been talking about Inglourious Basterds for a long time now. With this much anticipation built up it would be easy for the movie to be crushed under its own expectations. Tarantino never allows that to happen writing his best dialogue in years, crafting a movie that is entertaining and suspenseful all the way through and never allowing the movie to be anything but a fun time. Brad Pitt is excellent in his role as the head Basterd but the breakout role in this film is Landa. Christopher Waltz knocks one out of the park with his amazing portrayal of the Jew Hunting detective. If you love dialogue driven, fun, suspenseful films overlaid with a violent, inventive, daring storyline this is the best movie you could ever hope for.

Final Score:  9.5   [  Amazing ]