Inglourious Basterds [DVD] [2009] (film on DVD)
from Universal Pictures UK
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Starring: Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Eli Roth, Mike Myers
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Audience Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
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Although Quentin Tarantino has cherished Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 "macaroni" war flick The Inglorious Bastards for most of his film-geek life, his own Inglourious Basterds is no remake. Instead, as hinted by the Tarantino-esque misspelling, this is a lunatic fantasia of WWII, a brazen re-imagining of both history and the behind-enemy-lines war film subgenre. There's a Dirty Not-Quite-Dozen of mostly Jewish commandos, led by a Tennessee good ol' boy named Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who reckons each warrior owes him one hundred Nazi scalps--and he means that literally. Even as Raine's band strikes terror into the Nazi occupiers of France, a diabolically smart and self-assured German officer named Landa (Christoph Waltz) is busy validating his own legend as "The Jew Hunter." Along the way, he wipes out the rural family of a grave young girl (Melanie Laurent) who will reappear years later in Paris, dreaming of vengeance on an epic scale. Now, this isn't one more big-screen comic book. As the masterly opening sequence reaffirms, Tarantino is a true filmmaker, with a deep respect for the integrity of screen space and the tension that can accumulate in contemplating two men seated at a table having a polite conversation. IB reunites QT with cinematographer Robert Richardson (who shot Kill Bill), and the colors and textures they serve up can be riveting, from the eerie red-hot glow of a tabletop in Adolf Hitler's den, to the creamy swirl of a Parisian pastry in which Landa parks his cigarette. The action has been divided, Pulp Fiction-like, into five chapters, each featuring at least one spellbinding set-piece. It's testimony to the integrity we mentioned that Tarantino can lock in the ferocious suspense of a scene for minutes on end, then explode the situation almost faster than the eye and ear can register, and then take the rest of the sequence to a new, wholly unanticipated level within seconds. Again, be warned: This is not your "Greatest Generation," Saving Private Ryan WWII. The sadism of Raine and his boys can be as unsavory as the Nazi variety; Tarantino's latest cinematic protégé, Eli (director of Hostel) Roth, is aptly cast as a self-styled "golem" fond of pulping Nazis with a baseball bat. But get past that, and the sometimes disconcerting shifts to another location and another set of characters, and the movie should gather you up like a growing floodtide. Tarantino told the Cannes Film Festival audience that he wanted to show "Adolf Hitler defeated by cinema." Cinema wins. --Richard T. Jameson
"This might just be my masterpiece."  Sent: 07 September 2010
A loose thread which has run through most of Tarantino's films is the idea that anyone who puts on a mask, or a disguise, or a costume, or just pretends to be someone else... is doomed. The Reservoir Dogs couldn't spot the traitor in their midst because they'd obliterated their own identities, and The Bride's attempt to be Mrs. Tommy Plimpton ended in disaster. With Inglourious Basterds, Tarantino has finally delivered a definitive exploration of this theme. The more horrible it gets, the more wonderful it gets - and it gets pretty damn horrible.
The plot: Aldo Raine is off to Nazi-occupied France to make a Western. He's cast a dozen angry Jewish soldiers as Apache indians, and the entire Wehrmacht as marauding cowboys. And in the best war movie tradition, he's keeping absolute demarkation between the goodies and the baddies. Trouble is, not everyone on Aldo's own side can play their own parts perfectly either. Phoney German and Italian accents might fool the home audience, but won't get past astute critics like Gestapo Major Dieter Hellstrom and SS Colonel Hans Landa. By the time Aldo Raine and Josef Goebbels have finished making their respective propaganda fantasies, war has become so theatrical, and cinema so violent, that there's no distinction between a combat ambush and a movie premiere.
Some reviewers condemned this movie on moral grounds, namely that it transforms Jews into mass-murderers and Nazis into victims - which it does, but you're not meant to like that transformation; you're meant to be horrified. Inglourious Basterds has very little concern for historical reality, but plenty to say about the art that portrays it. It's the type of masterwork which I can only call "thematically saturated" - everything reflects the theme in some way; there's barely a single gesture which is superfluous or gratuitous. The attention to detail is meticulous. Tarantino really takes his time ratcheting up suspense over very polite, genteel conversations, giving much greater impact to the intermittent bursts of extremely bloody violence.
This is postmodern filmmaking at its very best - composed entirely from loving recreations of the worst glorifying excesses of gung-ho war movies, but knitting them all into a macabre ironic comedy of art, violence, masquerade, and collapsing identity.
What film was the trailer about? Sent: 20 August 2010
What violence there is, is brief and brutal.
The dialogue is what makes this film compelling.
Only when it is over will you realise that you have experienced (subtitled) scenes in French, English, German and (a little) Italian. These are not intrusive; they add to the central theme: people hiding.
The central plot is about an assassination attempt on Hitler in a cinema, but how and why and who is the real story.
The tension crackles through every scene; two and a half hours and not a wasted frame.
IB - Idiocy  Sent: 20 August 2010
The film is not worth the purchase at all and I think this review picks up on everything. Tarantino really has lost the plot, but I even felt this way with Kill Bill. Tarantino used to keep me guessing, now the action is pre-emptied and 'staged' rather than acted. Violence in his films is normally a bit thumbs up from me, but now his violence seems OTT - Hitler's face 'coming apart' as bullets are loaded into him is pointlessly crude. Why was Pitt cast? Because he's a sure-fire way of getting bums on seats in the cinema. ROI and all that. Landa was increadible though and one of the best acting performances I have ever seen. Apart from him, there is nothing else redeeming about this film.
The ending caps off a pointless couple of hours.
The film that never ends . . . . . . Sent: 19 August 2010
Or at least that's how it feels when stuck in the mire of yet another protracted, dull, dialogue-heavy scene which does very little to advance the plot of this fatally flawed movie which sees Tarantino makes the exact same mistakes that he did with dire, B-Movie horror homage Deathproof; namely that of far, far too much dull, witless, boring chatter possessing none of the insghtful, subtle irreverant briliance of his earlier work, coupled with very, very little pay-off.
Brad Pitt and his Basterd, (who are critically under used and to whom both stars are awarded) are the only redeeming feature of this dreadful, terrible movie that I was assured by friends would redeem my faith in the ailing, increasingly irrelevant Tarantino.
Is Tarantino getting older? Sent: 17 August 2010
Advantages: Good action, modern cinematography, great accents, very good acting
Disadvantages: Bad music, not very interesting dialogues, few surprises
There have been already quite a few reviews on this movie, so I will try to focus on my opinion.
The movie is quite decent and enjoyable, but the Trantino fan will be left kind of "numb" and slightly disappointed. The recipe for a tale of revenge does not work here as well as in, say, Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill.
The title is actually an homage to older anti-Nazi films, and refers esp. to the film "Inglorious Bastards" by Enzo Castellari (1978), with the original title "Quel maledetto treno blindato". But here is where similarities end and Tarantino certainly did not wish to just make a remake of the original.
The plot is divided in chapters, something we've seen before in Kill Bill. Tarantino stays faithful to his modern and unconventional directing methods, the cinematography and photography are pretty good, with interesting angles and camera shots. There is blood, but not the carnage witnessed in Kill Bill Vol.1. However, we don't see here something he hasn't done before. He repeats his old tricks but does not take the techniques forward, he's holding back somehow and is more conservative than I expected.
The dialogues are not as witty and sarcastic as in Pulp Fiction; they can get boring and pedantic. There isn't much swearing either, something that I always thought as one of Tarantino's trademarks. What I did like was the acting of the main characters and the incredible fact that some of them spoke German, French and English with very good accents. The language of the film, by the way, is not entirely English, but there are large parts in French and German as well.
Regarding the soundtrack, that was quite disappointing and I noticed at least two songs that he has used in Kill Bill as well. There is not such a great connection between the music and the action scenes as before.
The main flaw for me is the lack of one strong central character that would be the common element in all chapters. Despite what you think watching the trailer, Brad Pitt does not really stand out that much and does not have that much air time. The plot is rather equally divided between many characters, but this way it loses focus and the chance to develop a couple of really great characters such as the "bride" in Kill Bill or Travolta and Jackson in Pulp Fiction.
Has Tarantino lost his touch? Is he getting older and more conservative? I certainly hope not.
* The DVD extras had a featurette (6 mins) which is quite a surprise: the movie refers a lot to a fictitious film supposedly directed by Goebbels, named "The Nation's Pride". Of course, such a movie does not exist, but the featurette is this very "movie", i.e. Tarantino actually took the time and put together a small film - supposedly by Goebbels - and shows it in the extras just for the fun of it. It's a weird idea, very Tarantino-like.
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