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MovieMail's Review
Milo Wakelin reckons that Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's best film since Jackie Brown, read on to find out why.
"Once upon a time... in Nazi-occupied France"
From its first inter-title, Inglourious Basterds' promise of a fusion between Spaghetti Western and World War II thriller will tantalise any film lover. Thankfully, Tarantino delivers: Inglourious Basterds is his best work since Jackie Brown (1997): over 10 years in the writing, the result is witty, thrilling, gruesome, and an absolute pleasure to watch.
Both Kill Bill(2003; 2004) and Death Proof (2007) were fun but unfocused, but with Inglourious Basterds Tarantino has curtailed the worst of his New Wave impulses to deliver a compelling action thriller that breezes through its 2-hour plus running time. The eponymous Basterds are a group of eight Jewish commandos led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, sporting a Tennessee-accent and handsome moustache) whose mission is to spread terror among the German army by killing and scalping anyone they find in uniform.
Split into five chapters, Inglourious Basterds sets out various threads which slowly but surely draw together into an explosive finale: Goebbels' latest propaganda film, Nation’s Pride, is about to premiere in Paris, and knowing that the German High Command with be in attendance the Allies dispatch The Basterds to crash the party. But by a twist of fate, the cinema in question is owned by a young Jewish woman who intends to use her collection of explosive nitrate film to exact her own revenge on The Third Reich.
In short, Inglourious Basterds is a World War II movie about World War II movies in which the film medium becomes a destructive force in its own right. Just as The Basterds efface their victim's humanity by mutilating their corpses, so generations of filmmakers have used the Nazis as stock villains for whom there can be no compassion and for whom no fate is too hideous. Inglourious Basterds is an exuberant celebration of this B-movie tradition and pays tribute to classics including The Great Escape (1963), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and of course Enzo Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards (1978).
But for all the film's grisly violence and pyrotechnics, the script delivers the real thrills. Here, Tarantino's characteristically operatic dialogue has a real sense of impact and consequence: the fate of individuals, families - indeed, entire nations - hinge on jaw jaw, not war war. Deliciously, the dialogue shifts effortlessly between English, French, German and - very briefly - Italian; Tarantino's Europhilia has never been more in evidence.
The international cast of characters include a ruthless yet charming Nazi, Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz); a French Jew, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), who escaped Landa's clutches and now runs a Parisian cinema; Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), an unprepossessing German soldier whose heroic exploits form the basis of Nation's Pride; Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) a dashing British commando - and former film critic - parachuted behind enemy lines; and Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), a glamorous German actress and Allied agent.
Kruger and Fassbender are superb, but Waltz effortlessly steals the show: his performance as the cheerfully villainous Colonel Landa won Best Actor at Cannes and elevates the film into must-see status. As always, Tarantino's peerless ability to select a soundtrack is in evidence, with music from Ennio Morricone to David Bowie providing evocative accompaniment to the on-screen mayhem.
Arabic, Danish, Finnish, Hungarian, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish , Hard of Hearing - English
DVD Extras
Extended and Alternated Scenes
Nation's Pride Featurette
Trailers.
Film Description
Quentin Tarantino directs this ensemble action drama set in Europe during World War Two. In the first of two converging storylines, Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), a young Jewish woman in occupied France, seeks to avenge the death of her parents by the Nazis after narrowly escaping execution herself and fleeing to Paris. There she creates a new identity for herself as the owner and manager of a cinema. Meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, a group of Jewish American soldiers known as 'The Basterds', led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), joins forces with German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) to take down the leaders of The Third Reich. The Basterds cross paths with Shosanna when her cinema, which has been commandeered by the Nazis for the screening of their latest propaganda film, becomes the target for their next attack. However, unbeknown to them, Shosanna has devised a revenge plan of her own...
