Inglourious Basterds: Review By JT's Movie Page

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS REVIEW

By J.T. Johnson

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Daniel Bruhl, Mike Myers, Sylvester Groth

World War II and Quentin Tarantino collide in his latest film, Inglourious Basterds. The film follows Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt) and his followers as they make a name for themselves as they scalp Nazis throughout German occupied France. The name they become known by is the Basterds.

The film also follows two other storylines and, like Tarantino's Pulp Fiction before it, tells the parallel stories as they intersect each other throughout the film until they finally collide. One of the stories is that of the Nazis that is told primarily through Colonel Hans Landa (Waltz). He has become known as the "Jew Hunter" due to his skills at finding hidden Jews where other German soldiers would not even think of looking. The other story follows that of Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent), a Jew whose family was killed by Landa's men.

Dreyfus was able to escape from Landa's clutches and, four years later, is running a theater in Paris. She is constantly being approached by a young Nazi sniper named Fredrick Zoller (Bruhl), who was able to kill 300 American soldiers in Italy. He is also the subject of a new film called Nation's Pride and is able to convince the Nazi high command to change the viewing of the film to Dreyfus' cinema.

While Dreyfus has her own plans for revenge, the British have learned that Hitler's top soldiers will be in attendance. They send one of their own agents to work with the Basterds along with a double-agent known as Bridget von Hammersmark (Kruger) in infiltrating and blowing up the theater.

The first thing to notice is that it has all of the trademarks of a film written by Tarantino. The director feels comfortable sitting around with his characters while they engage in conversations like fellow director Kevin Smith while the action is as quick, violent and in the audience's face like a Robert Rodriquez film. Of course, the film's narrative is not always told in a linear way like Tarantino's earlier films such as Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill.

This, however, ends up being the film's biggest problem. It feels like Quentin Tarantino tried too hard (either consciously or unconsciously) to be a Tarantino film instead of trusting in himself to make a great movie. The film's music, as one example, sounds like it came straight out Kill Bill while Dreyfus' revenge felt too much like the Bride's story from said film. Another example is a completely useless back story that sets up a character that is not really that important to the overall story while the main characters have seemingly no past at all.

Also, the film should have been trimmed down. There is way too much set-up for the film's climax even for a Tarantino film and one feels like he/she is always two steps ahead of the main plot at all times.

The film also contains too many subtitles. This film is already set in an alternative World War II timeline and the film is not meant to be historically accurate. However, Tarantino chooses to stay true to Germans speaking German and the French speaking French. More than half the film is subtitled and this has two primary effects on the film. One is the fact that the audience is mostly reading instead of looking at Tarantino's beautifully constructed scenes. The second effect is that Tarantino's dialogue driven scenes get lost in translation as some of the subtitle go by too fast for one to keep up with the conversation. This really gets annoying at times.

But fear not. Tarantino's film is not the worst film of the year, as well. There is plenty to watch including Brad Pitt. Aldo Raine has all the coolest dialogue in the film and he is also the funniest character around. Pitt purposefully plays the character to the extreme and it works every single time. The scenes containing him and his fellow Basterds are some of the best scenes in the film and are definitely worth seeing. The only Basterd not worth seeing is Eli Roth's Sergeant Donny Donowitz, also known as the "Bear Jew." He is not on screen that much of the time to really matter, but Roth has proven with this role that he is a worse actor than he is at making films.

One of the best roles in the film, however, is that Colonel Hans Landa, played magnificently by Christoph Waltz. Waltz does not choose to play Landa as psychopathic villain that has crazy eyes and blood on his hands. Instead, Waltz always chooses to play Landa as a calm and collected individual that can talk about comparisons between Jews and rats in a chillingly civilized manner before ordering his men to come in and kill the Jews hiding under the floor. This is the role to see if anything else.

The violent action scenes also work, as well. That is because Tarantino has set up scenes that do keep the audience on the edge of their seats while they wait and wonder what is going to each and every character. At any moment, something could come along and someone will end up dead without a moment's notice. While the main plot may be too easy to follow, these scenes are shining examples of Tarantino's talent as a director.

In the end, the film is definitely not Tarantino's best outing but it is not as bad as some of the other films released this Summer. While the main plot can become boring at times with an uneven narrative, Brad Pitt and Christoph Waltz make the film watchable with a few great action scenes featuring over-the-top violence set in an alternative World War II.

3 / 5 Stars - Good