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Inglourious Basterds is simply glourious
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Eli Roth and Brad Pitt in Inglourious Basterds (Deliberatly misspelled.)
The main gripe some people have with Tarantino movies concern dialogue. Some find Tarantino dialogue long-winded and boring. In a sense, these gripes are justified. Consider the opening scene of Reservoir Dogs. Eight guys sitting around the table discussing the merits of tipping waitresses. Mr. Pink (Steve Buscemi) doesn’t care for tipping, and each man at the table has his say about the matter for almost ten minutes before the story even comes close to a point where it might reveal itself.
This is much like the intro to Tarantino’s latest film, Inglourious Basterds, except there is a considerable amount of suspense added to the scene, largely because the two players in the conversation are a Nazi colonel and a French dairy farmer, and the year is 1941. The dialogue goes on and on and you have a slight idea of what could happen next, but you’re just not sure. Pretty soon, you realize you are zeroed in and hanging onto every spoken word, and whether you consider each word long-winded or boring is suddenly irrelevant because well, you’re paying attention aren’t you? You’ve suddenly been deceived! You’re watching a Tarantino movie.
Deception is another point. I said earlier that this film featured Nazis in occupied France during the Second World War. That’s just about the only historical accuracy in the film. Inglourious Basterds is a blatant violation of history as we know it, and it’s made wonderfully entertaining as a result.
Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, the leader of a group of Jewish-American soldiers recreationally slaying Nazis across France and having a jolly good time doing it. Pitt’s character is witty and clever in an illiterate Southern sort of way and is a true Tarantino creation: a broad-stroke character somehow realistic and satirical at the same time. The other characters are similarly constructed. Christoph Waltz plays the aforementioned Nazi colonel, dubbed the “Jew Hunter” by the French populace. His motives are so outrageously calculated and cruel to the point where he is actually hilarious to watch. Melanie Laurent plays Shoshana Dreyfus, a shimmering blonde with a craving for revenge in much the same manner as the Bride in Tarantino’s dual Kill Bill movies. Those are the three main players in the movie, but the population of character delights is also comprised of Eli Roth as a baseball-bat wielding Nazi killer, Til Schweiger as a vicious, hardly-ever-speaks Nazi killer, and then there’s Diane Kruger as a German actress working undercover for more Nazi killers. All the characters are so richly textured, and each one is totally unique and discernable from the other. It makes the viewing experience varied and highly entertaining. Mike Myers even has a role in it. And Samuel L. Jackson narrates a few parts. There’s also that one guy from The Office.
Oh yeah, and Hitler is in it too.
It has all the elements of a dynamic crowd pleaser, but Tarantino would probably resist classifying his own film as such. He would like you to regard it as a commentary on violence and revenge and even morality. But before you get to any of that, you have to finish smiling and laughing and waiting for the next chapter in the film, one of which is called “The Revenge of the Giant Face.” How can you not laugh at that?
The film features an insanely satisfying ending that will likely end up defining this particular Tarantino movie, much like John Travolta and Uma Thurman’s dance-off scene or the famous syringe-to-the-heart scene defines Pulp Fiction. It’s just that good. You watch it, and it suddenly becomes the reason why you want to watch it again.
And if you haven’t probably guessed, this movie is rated R. In fact, Quentin Tarantino has never made a movie that wasn’t rated R, quite simply because violence is always a feature of his stories. If you don’t like violence, who cares? See this movie anyways and close your eyes at the bloody parts if you have to. But go see it.
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