Inglourious Basterds is Quentin Tarantino's 5th (or 6th if you count Kill Bill as 2 movies) film. This time he tackles the subject of World War II, specifically the exploits of the so called "Bastards" a group of 8 Jewish Soldiers tasked with fighting a war of terror against the Nazi's. In a non spoiler way, the films main plot revolves around a plan to kill off the majority of the Third Reich's high command at a movie premiere in Nazi occupied France.
The one thing that should be pointed out about this film is that one of the very first things to appear on screen is the phrase "Once upon a time...". That said I am sure there will still be people who see the film who will think that this is based on actual events!
So is it any good? This is most definitely a Tarantino movie. To sum it up simply the movie revolves, as is often the way with a Tarantino movie, around several long conversations, more often than not around a table. These conversations are broken up by actions shots (of which there are very few, but more on that later), exposition elements (my favorite being a brief shot explaining the relationship between Goebbels and his french Interpreter!) and Chapter breaks (the film is split into five chapters.) Being a Tarantino movie it doesn't shy away from the gore, although it does go for more realism than say Kill Bill with its over the top Blood Spray. Brad Pitt's Aldo Raine asks for 100 Nazi scalps from each man under his command, and it is safe to say that you see that happen at least once! Tarantino's love of movies is clearly shown throughout the film with winks and nods to various styles of film and film makers throughout, perhaps even more so than in previous films.
The one thing I wasn't expecting to be such a large element in this film was the humour. Don't get me wrong, I was expecting it to be funny, but there are parts of this film that had me giggling far into the next scene (Brad Pitt's attempt at Italian, while still speaking with Aldo Raine's southern drawl is particularly amusing). As if to juxtapose this, there is a real sense of menace to the film's main villain, SS officer Col. Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz. His character has some of the best scenes in the film. He is also one of the funniest characters, but everything he does is done so with an underlying menace. It's difficult to explain, but particularly the first chapter of the film, he comes across as funny and a nice (for a Nazi) but at the same time you get the very tangible sense that at any second something really horrible is about to happen.
The acting varies from hammy to dead pan to emotionally drenched straight depending on the character rather than the acting prowess of the whoever is playing them. Brad Pitt's Aldo is played with his tongue firmly in his cheek (Although it looks like his tongue is firmly in his bottom lip through most of the film), but that works perfectly. The rest of the Bastards vary in performances, Eli Roth's is also fairly hammy, where as the character of Hugo Stiglitz (played by Til Schweiger) is played totally straight. This isn't to say that anyone one particular character is there for comic relief. There are a few cameo's to look out for, Mike Myers being a good example (although his name is in the beginning credits so its hardly a spoiler to point him out.) There are two others that led to fun debate after the film as neither are credited. But I'll let you see if you can spot them yourself.
Overall the film is a lot of fun. At just over two hours it never feels long. The pace is typical for a Tarantino film, in other words a lot of long conversations, so some people may find this a tad tedious. If you are expecting a full on action movie with lots of shooting and explosions and heads blowing up, then you will probably be pretty disappointed. I'm also pretty sure a fair chunk of people simply wont get it. This film is Tarantino's take on how he would have liked WWII to have happened, it's not historically accurate, but it is a really good fairy tale.
Overall 9/10 - go see it!
There were few things my brother and I could agree upon when growing up, but one thing that was guaranteed to always shut us up for a couple of hours was a Ray Harryhausen film. Like most boys we didn't care about such trivialities as plot, character development, editing or acting. All we cared about was if the film was going to have any monsters in it (or nonsters if you were to ask my little brother.)
