Inglourious Basterds

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Aug 222009
 

ibThere was a brief moment during Inglourious Basterds where I questioned whether or not I liked it.¬† This was about a third of the way through the film and I just didn’t feel like I was connecting to it in the way that I thought I would have to in order to thoroughly enjoy it all.¬† This feeling eventually dissolved into Quentin Tarantino’s big, fun vat of his own version of World War II.

Tarantino is back to tell a story in German occupied France. The film begins with young Shoshanna escaping from the completely hilarious and insane Colonel Hans “Jew Hunter” Landa and forging a new life in Paris as a cinema owner and operator.¬† Meanwhile, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) has cobbled together a sort of misfit Jewish soldier gang referred to as ‘the Basterds’ and is hell bent on scalping every Nazi on a mission to bring down the third reich.

All of the usual Tarantino stuff is in here, so for those of you that aren’t fond of the man, just move along.¬† The movie is brutally violent, features extensive scenes of dialogue, a kickass soundtrack (with cuts from Ennio Morricone of course), chapter title cards, and his ridiculous obsession with women’s feet.¬† I don’t know what it is with Quentin and feet but I’m fairly certain that in the future, one of his films is going to have a female foot in the lead role.

Tarantino is so damn good at aping the spaghetti western style sometimes (as well as a million other genres) that I often wonder if he was born in the right decade.¬† This is definitely not an action movie but due to the amount of tension he wrings out of his intensely layered scenes of dialogue, you walk away feeling like it was. There’s a lot of squaring off between characters and it’s handled masterfully by Tarantino and acted superbly.¬† Intensity is flowing through everything onscreen.

His cast of colorful Basterds are sort of hit and miss.¬† Brad Pitt takes the role of Aldo Raine and injects all kinds of charisma into it, even though he’s playing the simplest of men really.¬† Eli Roth as ‘The Bear Jew’ was pretty fun to watch actually; something that I was concerned about initially being that he’s really just a director buddy of Tarantino.¬† I am a fan of Roth’s flicks too, but I was unsure of what to expect when I heard he was going to be a baseball bat wielding Nazi skull-cracker.¬† Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz (a German) was a man of few words and carried an extreme hatred for Nazis.¬† As for the rest of them, there’s really just a big smudge across them all, making them indistinguishable.¬† They’re just background noise, if you will.

Melanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus, looks nice and brooding with all the thoughts of revenge, but ultimately puts forth a mediocre performance.¬† She played what should be a very complex character in a rather straight and one-dimensional manner which really turned me off.¬† It’s just average at best, nothing that kills the film in any way.

The real gem of this movie is the performance of Christoph Waltz as Nazi Colonel Hans Landa.¬† This is what people are going to be talking about as they come out of this movie, and rightfully so as he steals damn near every scene that he’s in.¬† His interrogations are so courteous and polite and yet with these horrifying undertones that just make you squirm in your seat as if you yourself were under suspicion.

Inglourious Basterds isn’t balls to the wall Nazi killing action, which shouldn’t deter those of you that were hoping it is.¬† Tarantino’s dialogue is solid, the characters are, for the most part, well executed, and it stays an all-around fun movie even though it’s based around some pretty heavy and serious subject matter.¬† The movie definitely fits into QT’s body of work nicely and I’m looking forward to seeing this several more times before it leaves theaters.

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