Inglourious Basterds Review

I saw "Inglourious Basterds" opening night and have been avoiding writing this review ever since. Don't get me wrong the movie was good, I just not sure I can write this and keep from giving into my Quentin Tarentino fangirl tendencies.

Ad you may have heard, "Inglourious Basterds" is a very messed up fairy tale set in World War II. The movie is not a historic look at what happened during World War II, but rather a fantastical alternative history that would have been so much more dramatic and rewarding way to end World War II.

As is typical of Quentin Tarentino the story is not told in an entirely linear fashion. There are separate intertwining stories, and they are not necessarily shown in exact chronological order. As the title suggests one story centers around The Basterds, a group of Jewish soldiers led by Lt Aldo Raine (played by Brad Pitt) who go about Germany brutally killing and scalping Nazi's. Another story centers around Shosanna, a Jewish woman who is hiding her heritage and running a movie theater in France. The third story is all about spying and intrigue, and it is the binding element for the above mentioned stories.

This movie gave me a lot of what I was expecting lots of dead Nazi's, violence, and brilliant dialogue. Yet the movie held a few surprises for me as well, I had no idea that the majority of the movie would be in subtitles (not that it's a bad thing) or that the quality of acting would be so fantastic.

As I have said before I am a raging Quentin Tarentino fangirl. I like all of his movies, but If I had to rank them 1 being the best the list would go as follows.

1. "Pulp Fiction"
2. "Kill Bill" (I count both volumes as one movie)
3. "Inglourious Basterds"
4. "Resevoir Dogs"
5. "Death Proof" (P.S. a great movie to watch if your a woman who just had a bad breakup)
6. "Jackie Brown"

Granted everyone is going to have their own opinion, sometimes you just connect to one movie more then another. Yet I think most people would agree that "Inglourious Basterds" is one of Quentin Tartentino's better movies. Certainly I would say that "Inglourious Basterds", despite all of it's violence shows more maturity and emotional depth then his other films. If you notice in past films most characters are not shown in a sympathetic way, in this film Shosanna has a very emotional role and is in some ways more human then a lot of previous Quentin Tarentino's characters.

When you see a Quentin Tarentino film you expect a lot of style and some great dialogue, and certainly this movie had all of that, yet the best part of this movie was the acting.

Brad Pitt is a tremendous actor whose talent is often overshadowed by his good looks. Brad Pitt plays the character of Aldo Raine to perfection and completely steals every scene he is in, he is lovable and hilarious despite doing some rather gruesome things. You know someone has done a tremendous job when you think about the role and honestly can't imagine anyone else being able to play the part as well. I still crack up a bit when I think about Aldo speech about "The Bear Jew".

The other Actor who managed to steal every scene he was in Christoph Waltz, who plays the flamboyant Col. Hans Landa better known as "The Jew Hunter." He manages to be completely menacing while still being rather humorous and charming. You can't take your eyes off of him when he is on screen.

Another fantastic performance comes from Mélanie Laurent who has an emotionally demanding role. Micheal Fassbender also shines in his performance as a British officer. Til Schweiger also shines in a small part as one of the Bastards. Really every actor did a great job in terms of acting.

Ok so I have gone through the good, now lets get to the bad.

There were parts of this movie that seemed to lag, and a few things that could have done with a bit more editing. I know that the intention was to build suspense, but in particular the scene where the Donny Donowitz aka "The Bear Jew" was about to make his entrance the camera has a close up on an empty cave entrance for longer then a minute was a bit much. The parts of this movie that were good were so good that you forgive the parts where it lagged.

I have heard that there were more detailed back stories for The Basterds that got left out of the film, and personally I would have loved to see them. The Bastard known as "The Bear Jew" is known for beating Nazi's to death with a baseball bat. What they don't show you in the film is that he had all of the Jews from his neighborhood sign the bat before he left for war. I think little things like that add a lot to the movie, and I wish it would have been left in.

One of the most frequent criticisms that I have seen from other critics is that the movie has no real point, in some ways it is a valid argument. However I don't think a movie needs to have a point or definite message. "Inglourious Basterds" is an extremely entertaining movie and a clear work of fantasy, why spoil it by trying to shove morality down your throat. We know the Nazi's were very bad, we know they did evil things, your not going to be teaching us anything new on this subject. This is a revenge film fulfilling a need for justice that was never truly experienced here in the real world.

I think "Inglourious Basterds" is a great movie, and it seems like the type of film that only gets better each time you watch it. Yes it's violent, yet it's a complete work of fiction, yea it doesn't have a moral; but it's a damn good movie not despite these attributes but also because of them.