Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds

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Inglourious Basterds (Single-Disc Edition)

Reviewed by Arnita D. Brown, 2010-03-03

In Nazi occupied France, young Jewish refugee Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses the slaughter of her family by Colonel Hans Landa. Narrowly escaping with her life, she plots her revenge several years later when German war hero Fredrick Zoller takes a rapid interest in her and arranges an illustrious movie premiere at the theater she now runs. With the promise of every major Nazi officer in attendance, the event catches the attention of the "Basterds", a group of Jewish-American guerilla soldiers led by the ruthless Lt. Aldo Raine. As the relentless executioners advance and the conspiring young girl's plans are set in motion, their paths will cross for a fateful evening that will shake the very annals of history. "Inglorious Basterds" tremendously entertaining, shocking, dramatic, suspenseful, and funny at the same time. The entertainment and laughter is led by Brad Pitt. I found him extremely funny and entertaining. Tarantino delivers, and this movie does not diappoint.

A Fantastical, Revisionist Look Back at World War II, Tarantino Style

Reviewed by Ed Uyeshima, 2010-03-03

Polarizing filmmaker Quentin Tarantino's unadulterated love of cinema is really the most pervasive factor in his fantastical 2009 World War II adventure. Running an epic-length 153 minutes, it may appear on the surface like The Longest Day, but the director/writer takes inspiration from Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns (The Good, the Bad and the Ugly), Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Hollywood wartime propaganda B-movies, and his own adrenaline-infused and blackly comic films (Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill) to tell an audacious "what-if...?" story about a group of guerrilla U.S. soldiers in Nazi-occupied France. The tightly wound plot revolves around three key figures: Colonel Hans Landa, an elegant, seemingly bloodless Nazi officer known as "The Jew Hunter"; Lt. Aldo Raine, a Tennessee-born resistance fighter who has organized a special squad of Jewish-American soldiers whose goal is scalping and killing Nazis; and Emmanuelle Mimieux (née Shosanna Dreyfus), a pensive young Jewish woman who runs a movie theater in Paris.

As presented by Tarantino over the course of five discrete chapters, the three disparate figures converge upon Mimieux's theater for the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film called "A Nation's Pride". There in attendance is to be not only Third Reich Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels but also the Fuehrer himself. Needless to say, the filmmaker has carefully set up all his chess pieces for a flamboyant finale that represents a manifestation of some kind of crude moral justice that revisionist history allows only grand storytellers like Tarantino. Riddled with quirky incongruities, some of which border a bit too closely to self-parody, his signature style is evident through a series of set pieces, most heavy on insinuating dialogue, that suddenly explode like the tavern mêlée in La Louisiane.

In a turnabout from his Oscar-baiting performance last year as the passive Benjamin Button, Brad Pitt brings cocksure arrogance to Raine in an enjoyably hammy turn. Mélanie Laurent perfectly captures Shosanna's simmering resentment until her cathartic release during the explosive conclusion, while Diane Kruger cuts a somewhat more predictable figure as a Dietrich-like femme fatale actress in cahoots with Raine's battalion. Tarantino fills smaller roles with oddball choices like Mike Myers as a pip-pip British general, Rod Taylor (The Birds) as Churchill, and Hostel director Eli Roth as a baseball bat-wielding Nazi killer. Regardless, the best work comes from Christoph Waltz's nuanced turn as the sadistic Landa. It's a masterfully subtle performance amid a movie that is anything but subtle.

Waltz's best scene comes right at the beginning with his unbearably tense conversation with a stoic French farmer suspected of hiding a family of Jews. There is also glorious camerawork from veteran cinematographer Robert Richardson (JFK). The extras seem a bit too stretched out for the 2009 two-disc set, especially with no Tarantino commentary being offered in this package. Instead, on the first disc, we get two extended scenes and one alternate, the movie-within-the-movie "A Nation's Pride", and a few trailers. The second disc offers a half-hour round table discussion among Tarantino, Pitt, and film critic Elvis Mitchell; a faux-making-of featurette for "A Nation's Pride"; a discussion of the original Italian movie, Inglorious Bastards (upon which this movie bears little similarity); and a few other more obscure extras. Love it or hate it, the film reflects the filmmaker's uniquely audacious style in his most serious effort to date.

Sex, sadism and some historic data

Reviewed by Michael Kerjman, 2010-03-02

Eventually, this next Holocaust-related vaudeville is the latest attempt to professionally contribute a tragic topic visualisation by an "eatable" way attracting contemporary viewers with murdering, gore, blood mixed with sex, sadism and some historic data.

Performing is starling, characters are clever, educated, and professional and worth each other enemies, Brad Pitt is sexy even in moms and baggy camouflage, Hitler looks the most realistic than in any other movie a reviewer had seen, a clone from "Adolf & Eva" surely - and something anyway in the air not allowing to top-mark this work. Probably, it is an unnecessary exaggeration of producer's own delusions of both history recorded and glorifying the unspeakable to an extent of heroic.

Loser...start to finish

Reviewed by aPaladin, 2010-03-02

No-one sane will ever understand why Hollywood insists on continuing to make movies that are downright insulting, ludicrous and unentertaining....could it be the mentality of the viewing public? Evidently, Tarantino has the same "tongue in cheek" disregard because inglorious basterds has to pertain to the paying audience and not to the storyline. Ten minutes into this movie you'll wonder where it's going and why. At the end you still won't know. My minor grandchild could make a better movie. But, Tarantino, with the IQ of a fence post, is laughing all the way to the bank having fooled his fawning public, again. And you, will have wasted 2 1/2 hours of your life which you'll never get back....

just an ugly film

Reviewed by R. Bagula, 2010-03-02

Brad Pitt really slaughters his role badly as the
officer in charge of the "Inglourious Basterds"
Jewish OSS hit team of terrorists.
The action has some of the worst violence
scenes outside of a horror movie,
with scalpings and a fellow beat to death on camera
with a baseball bat.
The idea is that killing all the German high command would have
ended the war early, and the movie is a sort of Jewish fantasy
about killing Nazis.
I found myself wondering that such a film
which is at best a B-film
got mass marketing?