Inglorious Basterds review

The thing that makes Quentin Tarantino popular with film geeks is he's a film geek himself. All his films are based on film genres he loves. Kill Bill was a kung fu film. Jackie Brown was a Blaxploitation film etc etc. Inglorious Basterds is a tribute to Italian World War II films with a splash of Spaghetti Western thrown in for good measure. Inglorious Basterds was the English title of a 1978 film directed by Enzo Castellari. He's been around since the 60s directing mostly Italian action films. Only someone like Tarantino would know about him. The video title is Deadly Mission. It starred Bo Svensson and Fred Williamson and is basically an Italian version of The Dirty Dozen. Tarantino wasn't interested in remaking the film. In fact, the story in his film is different. He was interested in recreating the feel of those Italian films and he liked the title Inglorious Basterds. So Tarantino was trying make a new version of a type of film he enjoyed. So the film is a tribute to a kind of film most of us have never seen.






The film begins with SS officer Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) tracking down a Jewish family in hiding. He kills them all except for Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent). She changes her name and opens a movie theatre in Paris. Meanwhile, we are introduced to a motley crew who go around killing Nazis and scalping them. They are led by the swaggering Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). While they're doing their thing, Nazi war hero Pvt. Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) is attracted to Shosanna. Obviously she's not crazy about him. But a film has been made about Zoller and he convinces Goebbels to premiere the film in her theatre. When she finds out that all the Nazi brass including Hitler will be at the premiere, she decides to burn the joint down. Meanwhile, Raine hatches a plot to blow the joint up. That doesn't go too well when Landa finds out about it but a couple of twists turns Inglorious Basterds into a WWII fantasy film that many of us wish had actually happened.






Inglorious Basterds is a fun film that is a lot longer than it seems. That's a good thing. Brad Pitt seems an unlikely choice for Aldo Raine. But he bulked up for the film and ends up being a cross between Clark Gable and John Wayne. Christoph Waltz is outstanding as Hans Landa in his largest English language role to date. He's Austrian and his worked mostly in German TV since the late 70s. It's a very juicy role and he makes the most of it. Michelle Laurent is a French actress making her English language debut. The supporting characters aren't fleshed out as well as the leads. But Tarantino concentrates on keeping things moving very quickly so it isn't that big of a deal. Tarantino wrote the script himself and he succeeds admirably and creating a breezy action film with plenty of violence and pyrotechnics. Even the music is a tribute to Italian cinema as he uses no original music and several themes by Italian composer Ennio Morricone. Was WWII fun? Of course not. But this fantasy film about WWII is a lot of fun. Check out the trailer.