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Rating: 4.5 out of 5
After the BLAH of Death Proof and his iconic Kill Bill series, Quentin Tarantino returns with a big, violent, and entertaining war movie Inglorious Bastards. A movie where the main character states, “You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we’re in the killin’ Nazi business. And cousin, business is a-boomin’.” Inglorious Basterds takes place in an alternative version of World War II, where the Basterds kill Nazis and takes down one of the evilest people on the planet while a cunning SS office tracks down others until they ultimately meet.
If you want to know what this film reminds me of, it is The Dirty Dozen. It took me a while to think of it, but as I re-watched the Dirty Dozen again, which is a great movie to watch, I was reminded that Inglorious Basterds is very similar to the Dirty Dozen. In the Dirty Dozen, the military has a group of misfits that are tasked to complete an impossible mission. Pretty much they are criminals and the bottom of the barrel. This film’s concept is somewhat the same as the Basterds are tasked to take down Adolf Hitler, but we are getting ahead of ourselves.
As usual, Tarantino’s film is split up into different chapters, with each one revolving around three main characters that become intertwined in one crazy story. The three main characters can be categorized like the film The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly. This time we can just label them The American, The Beauty, and The Nazi.
Tarantino starts his movie off in the most intense way possible with the introduction of The Nazi and The Beauty. The film opens in 1941 with Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz), a detective of the Waffen-SS, proudly known as the “Jew Hunter,” visiting French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Ménochet). After making casual conversation in French and taking a glass of LaPadite’s delicious milk, Landa gets tired of speaking in French and switches to English instead. While speaking in English, Landa begins his interrogation and notes that his papers state that all of the Jewish families around LaPadite’s region have been accounted for except the Dreyfuses family, who straight up disappeared. Landa believes that someone is hiding the family. After some small talk about how he uses his incredible brain and detective skills to hunt down Jews, he states that he is required to follow the command and conduct a search of all surrounding areas. While dropping some subtle but terrifying hints, LaPadite folds and gives up the Drefuses family stating they are under the floorboards. Knowing where the family is, Landa switches back to French and orders his soldiers to fire their guns into the floorboards, killing the Dreyfuses. However, Landa hears a noise and sees the teenage Shosanna (Laurent) running away into the hills. As Shosanna runs away, Landa considers killing her but lets her go.
We begin the next chapter with the introduction of The American and his Basterds. The scene takes place three years later in 1944, a little before D-Day. We are introduced to one of the craziest commanders and redneck Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt). Raine addresses his newly formed eight-man Jewish-American commando unit. In a drill sergeant/Patton way, Raine states that his men will be dropped behind enemy lines to cause havoc to all Nazi soldiers they come across with the goal of bringing fear into the heart of the enemy. He finishes off with saying that since the Nazis have no humanity in them, that they are given full control to kill them any way they see fit, along with the goal of taking 100 Nazi scalps.
The third chapter is the actual introduction of The Beauty. After fleeing Landa, Shosanna reappears on June 1, 1944, and has assumed the identity of Emmanuelle Mimieux. Shosanna manages a cinema in Paris. She meets Fredrick Zoller (Brühl), an acclaimed sniper who becomes obsessed with Shosanna and gets the bright idea to hold his Nazi propaganda film at her cinema. Zoller uses his influence to convinces Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to hold the premiere while inviting the world’s most dangerous man Hitler to the premiere. Shosanna’s world couldn’t get any worse when she sees that Landa is in charge of security. Shosanna soon begins her plan to kill everyone.
First, let’s talk about the performance of Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa. Waltz was PHENOMENAL as Landa. His performance was chilling, cunning, meticulous, and a person in complete control of his environment. What makes Waltz’s performance so good is that it reminded me of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lector. A man who is a genius over everyone else but takes his time analyzing and slowly making their prey mess up. He is so chilling as he gives subtle smirks and chuckles like he knows that you are messing up. This is why the man won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Now for the movie. It is a typical but very entertaining Tarantino movie. If you are looking for some violent scenes, then this movie has it. The violence works pretty well until the film’s absolute end, where it was just overboard and didn’t make any sense. One of the violent scenes that were great was when the Basterds were interrogating one of the Nazi officers. As one of the officers wouldn’t give up information, Eli Roth’s character beat the Nazi officer’s brains in with a baseball bat. It is gruesome, but it served its point.
Another scene that I thought was great in this film was when the Basterds come up with a way to infiltrate the cinema with the help of the beautiful Bridget von Hammersmark (Kruger), a German film star turned spy for the Allies, and Lt. Archie Hicox (Fassbender), a British paratrooper and former film critic who joins the Basterds on their mission in France, they stop in an inn/bar. Things seemed to be fine as they play the game. It’s crazy as one little mistake sets off a dynamite explosion in the room as gunfire rains down on everyone. It is a funny but intense scene.
Inglorious Basterds is an excellent Tarantino film to watch. It might not be one of his best movies, but it is one of his top 5 ever. Christoph Waltz is absolutely terrifying and riveting in his role. The story is gruesome but also fun to watch. Join the Basterds and get in the killin’ Nazi business.
