I was not sure what to hope for from Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino wrote the film years ago, and put it on hold because he did not know how to end it. He decided to make Kill Bill instead. After such a long lapse, nearly all of the actors that appear in the final film are second, third, or even fourth choices. These seem to be the circumstances that can turn an otherwise great movie bad. If you are, however, a Tarantino fan that has held out hope, you will be relieved to know that he has managed to succeed yet again, despite the odds against him. As far as I am concerned, Quentin Tarantino has never made a bad movie. Inglourious Basterds does not tarnish his record.
I was not sure what to hope for from Inglourious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino wrote the film years ago, and put it on hold because he did not know how to end it. He decided to make Kill Bill instead. After such a long lapse, nearly all of the actors that appear in the final film are second, third, or even fourth choices. These seem to be the circumstances that can turn an otherwise great movie bad. If you are, however, a Tarantino fan that has held out hope, you will be relieved to know that he has managed to succeed yet again, despite the odds against him. As far as I am concerned, Quentin Tarantino has never made a bad movie. Inglourious Basterds does not tarnish his record.
The film takes place in Nazi-occupied France between 1941 and 1944. Brad Pitt stars as Lt. Aldo Raine, the gruff, Tennessee born leader of the “Basterds,” a group of Jewish American soldiers who have only one mission: Kill as many Nazis as they can. Over the years in which the film takes place, they build a nasty reputation for themselves among German soldiers. It is based as much on the gruesomely scalped heads of the Nazis they kill, as it is on the stories from the occasional survivors from Basterd attacks. No survivor gets away unscathed, though. Anyone who lives receives a swastika carved into his forehead by Raine himself. The scenes that show the Basterds at work are brutal. The soldiers seem incapable of mercy, and if one were to view the movie with no knowledge of who the Nazis were and what they represented, he or she might have trouble deciding exactly who the good guys of the movie are supposed to be.
Such a decision would actually only be difficult if the viewer missed the opening scene. The film is divided into five chapters, and the first one introduces us to our villain. Col. Hans Landa arrives at the humble home of a dairy farmer he suspects of sheltering Jews. After a very long conversation with the farmer, Landa (who has proudly earned the nickname, the Jew Hunter), finds his suspicions confirmed. He ruthlessly kills a Jewish family in hiding. Only the teenage daughter, Shosanna, escapes. Landa does not attempt to stop her, confident that he will have another chance at her later. Were this opening scene the only one in which Landa appeared, we would still be confident that the actor portraying him, Christoph Waltz, would receive a lot of attention come awards season. The fact that Landa is the primary antagonist of the film, and that he continues his campaign for the duration, almost makes this a certainty.
Landa does indeed get another chance to catch and kill Shosanna several years later. She goes into hiding in Paris with a new identity as the owner of a movie theater. In an unexpected turn of events, one of the German soldiers who frequents her theater turns out to be a young war hero who stars as himself in a new Nazi propaganda film. When the soldier becomes smitten with Shosanna, he convinces his superiors to hold the premiere of the film in her theater. Every top ranking German will be in attendance, including Hitler. Shosanna decides she will use the opportunity to exact her revenge on all Nazis. Fortunately, the head of security for the event, Landa, does not recognize her (or does he?).
Of course, such a perfect opportunity does not escape the notice of the Basterds. They come up with their own plan to take down those attending the premiere. It becomes their mission to effectively end World War II in a single night. I will not reveal the outcome of these two separate attempts to kill the leaders of the Nazi party, but I will say that I was not expecting it to turn out the way it did. The final chapter is entitled “Revenge of the Giant Face.” The meaning behind this title is an unforgettable image.
With this film, Quentin Tarantino proves that he can still make a sensational movie even when it is populated with stand-ins. The two characters that really matter, Aldo Raine and Hans Landa, are played quite well. Pitt plays Raine as a man who would only be considered a hero during war. He is a man who is brutal and gruff, and quite probably insane. Waltz manages to steal the movie, though. He plays Landa perfectly as a cold and calculating detective, always one step ahead of his prey, even when he seems to be two steps behind. The rest of the characters are largely forgettable, so the fact that the actors who portray them were not necessarily the first choices has little effect on the overall film.
It is important to note that whatever the trailers may show, Tarantino does not normally make action films. He is not afraid of action scenes, but he generally keeps them short and he prefers to build up to them through long, increasingly tense, conversations between his characters. This quality is what makes his films so engrossing. He knows that a Mexican standoff is more exciting than a gunfight. He uses this knowledge to great effect throughout Inglourious Basterds, and the result is an excellent film.
