Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds

I have to admit, I was kind of put off when I first heard about Inglourious Basterds. I was not a big fan of Tarantino's Kill Bill movies and never really had an urge to watch Death Proof. And then I saw how he mispelled the words in the title to be mysterious and cool, and I just found that annoying. Then I started hearing rumors of some graphic scalping scenes and I just really didn't want to deal with that. So I wrote it off.

I'm glad I changed my mind and eventually sat down and watched it. Because despite the fact that I still think some of the gore is unnecessary and the mispelling of the title is still lame, Inglourious Basterds is easily Tarantino's best film since Pulp Fiction.

The plot is pretty complicated, with a lot of different chess pieces slowly inching towards each other - there is Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and his Inglourious Basterds - Jewish-American soldiers who are fighting a guerilla war in France and striking fear into the hearts of Nazis everywhere. There is Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a SS detective and security officer who hunts down Jews trying to escape from Nazi-occupied France. Which leads us to Shosanna (Melanie Laurent), a young Jewish women whose parents were killed by Landa earlier in the war. Now she owns a movie theater in Paris and is being wooed by a bothersome German war hero (Daniel Bruhl). But then there is also British officer Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who is working with double agent, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) to bring down some high ranking members of the Third Reich. All the characters have their separate stories, boldly interweaving and jumping around without a care in the world. I don't want to spoil how the stories weave together - for me, watching how everything connects was half the fun.

In many ways, Inglourious Basterds is a big breakthrough for Tarantino. He launches into a true period piece and despite its fantastical and unrealistic characters and plot developments, he has created a World War II setting that is entirely believable and real. Everything feels, looks, and mostly sounds right. It helps that he lets everyone speak in their proper language (the Germans speak German, the French speak French, and so on). Having military buff and filmmaker John Milius (director of Conan the Barbarian and writer of Apocalypse Now) as a consultant certainly helped, as well. Either way, this is an impressive feat of filmmaking and writing.

The acting is also top notch. Christoph Waltz as the main villain is superb - his line readings alternating between smooth, charming, menacing, and then suddenly outright bizarre (check out how he giggles, "Biiinnngggooo!!!"). It is a great performance. But I expected that - everyone talked about how amazing he was, and he lived up to those expectations. What I was not expecting was how much I loved A) Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine, the tough and witty leader of the Basterds. His Tennessee accent is over-the-top without being a parody and he gets many of the best lines; B) Michael Fassbender, who made Zero impression on me in 300, is excellent as Archie Hicox. And I think I may have been watching the actor who eventually replaces Daniel Craig as James Bond in another five years or so. Fassbender is so much like a young Connery. Watch the scene where he is briefed by Winston Churchill and tell me it doesn't remind you of Thunderball or From Russia With Love. And watch his grace under pressure in the tavern scene and tell me you don't think he'd be a good Bond. Count me a fan; and C) Diane Kruger as German actress/double agent. I have never been a fan of Kruger thanks to forgettable performances in Troy and National Treasure, but here she shows true depth and a remarkable range. To be honest, at the end of the movie, I was most concerned about whether her character would live or die, and it mostly due to Kruger's work.

If I have any complaints about the film, and I have a few, it has to do with the length. He could have trimmed a good 20-minutes out. That said, I don't really know what he could cut out. He creates a number of set pieces - only instead of action set pieces, they are drawn out conversations between adversaries, dripping with suspense and double meanings. They are all fabulously written and acted and take their time to develop. I wouldn't want to cut any of them. The problem is that after five or six of these scenes, your butt just begins to fall asleep. There's really no way around that. But what would I take out? Hell if I know...I would also like to complain again about the gore - not that the bad guys don't deserve it, but that doesn't mean I need to watch all the scalping and carving and baseball bat beating. Another minor complaint - the use of David Bowie's song from Cat People is completely inappropriate -it plays while Shosanna is dressing to attend a big Nazi party. It's supposed to make her badass. Instead it makes it seem like she's attending a politically incorrect costume party in the 1980s.

MVP: Well, the MVP has to be Tarantino. For the first time in a long time, he actually reigns in his excesses and uses them in service of the movie - this includes his monologues. All too often his speeches are in his own voice, as if Tarantino is commenting on the scene in the film. While certainly well written and interesting, they are often completely out of character and throw me out of the movie - yeah, I'm looking at you Kill Bill 2 and your lame Superman speech that totally ruins the climax of the film! Yet here, the extensive dialogue and speeches are all in character, all of them service the film perfectly and do not slow the momentum down at all; on the contrary, they only ratchets up the suspense. Tarantino mentioned he wanted to make a Medieval film some day soon. At first, I was really not happy about that. But now that I've seen what he is capable of doing with a true period piece, count me in. Just keep David Bowie off the soundtrack.

TRIVIA: Tarantino almost cast two funny men in roles that I would have never have imagined - Adam Sandler almost played Basterd Donny Donowitz, the hulking warrior who likes to beat Nazi heads in with his baseball bat. And Simon Pegg (Shawn of the Dead) almost played Archie Hicox. Both would have been interesting choices, if strange. Luckily, both had scheduling conflicts (Sandler was working on Funny People and I'm not sure what Pegg was working on - probably Star Trek). All's well that ends well, I suppose. I like Eli Roth as Donowitz and have already discussed Fassbender above.

BEST LINE: You know as embarrassing as this is - with all the wealth of good dialogue in this movie, what I remember most is the way Brad Pitt says "Arrivederci." I completely lost it. It's the funniest sequence in the film...

OSCARS: Best Supporting Actor (Christoph Waltz)

OSCAR NOMINATIONS: Best Picture, Director (Tarantino), Original Screenplay (Tarantino), Editing, Sound Editing, Sound Mixing, Cinematography,