Film Review: Inglourious Basterds

Yes, the spelling is way out of whack however when pressed, director and creative genius (of course I gush - I love him) Quentin Tarantino merely explained it was "the Tarantino way" of spelling it.

Once Upon A Time ... In Nazi-Occupied France. So begins Quentin Tarantino's latest cinematic homage to the spaghetti-western, Inglourious Basterds. In this first chapter we meet the wicked, yet decidedly charming, Colonel Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz, who won Best Actor at Cannes this year), known around France at the time as the "Jew Hunter". And hunt he does, cracking out some typically Tarantino-esque dialogue to the horror of Perrier LaPadite, a French dairy farmer (the tension is palpable) who is harbouring a Jewish family beneath the floor boards. After literally sniffing them out, Landa's troops shoot the whole family, except teenager Shosanna Dreyfus who escapes on foot - to reappear later in the film.

In the following chapter we meet Brad Pitt's crew of Inglourious Basterds - a group of mainly Jewish-American soldiers hellbent on revenge, and handpicked for their ruthless determination to take out as many Nazis as possible. This scene is hilarious, and we are introduced one-by-one to the members of the Basterds, one of whom is called "Jew Bear". Their central goal is the carnage and scalping (warning: cover your eyes ye of the faint heart!), and occasional branding, of Nazis. They are adept at their work.


We later meet up with Shosanna, who has changed her name to Emmanuelle Mimieux and is now the owner of a smallish cinema. Her beauty captures the eye of a Nazi war hero, and a glorious mix of tension and hilarity ensue as she plots her revenge against the Nazis. Little does she know that the Basterds are also planning a concurrent attack - not without some setbacks along the way.

Some piggish Germans at play.

The ending - without giving anything away - follows the almost fairytale (for adults) retelling of a segment of WWII. After the heavy, sad and most-definitely respectful dealing of WWII and its 6 million Jewish victims (Schindler's List), and the more recent (I say despicable) sympathetic dealings of some of the Nazi protagonists (think The Reader which made me dreadfully uncomfortable and angry at the unnecessarily and inappropriately sympathetic handling of what was by all accounts a mass murdering monster - and Winslet somehow got a bloody Oscar for this portrayal with all those Jews in Hollywood! Belated congrats for Titanic, I say) - Inglourious Basterds is a ROMP and a happy ending to a horrific passage in humankind's history!

Yes. Romp. There is humour, madcap activities, fabulous dialogue and a great storyline with wonderful characters. And of course, it's never difficult to make Nazis despicable, but Tarantino's take on them is just so amusing (as is the scene in London, with an Aussie actor puffing on a cigar in the corner as Winston Churchill, as orders are barked out comically by I-don't-know-who-and-can't-be-bothered-Googling). It's great fun, and from some of the other reviews I've read, it's gone down very well in the Jewish community. It's sad history hadn't really been a pick-a-path with this ending as an option.

Seriously. If you can't handle gore, just cover your eyes. The movie is so much more than the bloody violence: the acting is superb, the dialogue totally on in Tarantino style, and the music great (I love the remix of Moonlight Sonata in Chapter 1). Go see it. 4.5 stars.