Inglourious Basterds review

Reviewed by Kate Rodger

His best work since Pulp Fiction? Probably.

This is Quentin Tarantino’s long-awaited World War II film Inglourious Basterds. This story has been washing around on the fevered seas of the Tarantino mind for 11 years looking for the shore, until early last year the director finally took the wheel. His masterpiece had finally finished gestating, it was on the page and now ready to make the leap to the film set.

He wanted one of the biggest movie stars on the planet for his film, and Brad Pitt said yes. He needed a German actor who was a linguistic genius to play the central, pivotal role of SS Colonel Hans Landa, and Christoph Waltz appeared like a vision before him. Nine months later, Tarantino and his cast hit the red carpet at Cannes, for their world premiere. The Cannes jury gave Waltz Best Actor for his trouble and he deserved it. I’d like to see him get an Oscar nomination as well. Yes, he is THAT good.

The basic premise is this: Lt Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles himself a crack team of Nazi-hating soldiers, who drop into German-occupied France on a mission to collect as many Nazi scalps as they can get their hands on. On the flipside of this story is a mysterious French woman who owns a Parisian cinema, who is hiding her Jewish past, and on a scalp-collecting mission of her own. It seems only natural these two storylines will interweave, and that Colonel Hans Landa should play the lead role in them both.

Quentin Tarantino is the master of dialogue, and it feels so good to see him working his magic here. He uses it not just to pass the time, but to open the door into the hearts and minds of his most important characters. In the case of Colonel Landa, our quintessential Tarantino badarse, the door is wide open from the get go, a long luscious opening scene dripping with delicious Tarantino dialogue sets him up to perfection and was a joy to behold.

The most important thing to note here, is this World War II story is a work of complete Tarantino fiction nestled oh so very loosely in the arms of historical fact. He re-writes history, and it’s very, very entertaining. It’s also, of course, pretty violent, and the kind of inventive, colourful violence his fans have come to know and love.

I loved these Basterds, and can’t wait to see them again.

4 and half stars.

source: newshub archive