INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

U.S.A. - Germany | 2009 Directed by Quentin Tarantino Starring Brad Pitt Christoph Waltz Mélanie Laurent Color | 152 Minutes | R Format: DVD (R1 - NTSC) Universal Home Video

Music from the film "The Verdict" MP3 format - 2.9 MB

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Single-disc edition (Reviewed)

Also available on Blu-ray

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		Review by Brian Lindsey Film:8 DVD:6

So Eccentric Cinema has been online for almost nine years... and you're only NOW getting around to a Quentin Tarantino movie?

Well, yeah. There are a zillion critiques of Pulp Fiction and the Kill Bill saga out there, so I just didn't feel the need — although I've loved, or at least liked, all of his films to date, even the problematic Death Proof. But a QT-helmed excursion into World War II Europe... Now that's something different!

Moviegoers who chose to see Inglourious Basterds based on the trailers and TV spots certainly got something different; those promos were blatantly, intentionally misleading. This is most definitely not an action-adventure film (even if the Weinstein brothers wanted us to think so). It's a wonderfully oddball mélange of cartoon caricatures, extremely dark humor, tragic drama and bloody horror. True to Tarantino form, Inglourious Basterds — with the exception of its apocalyptic, history-twisting climax — isn't so much a narrative as it is a collection of linked yet stand-alone set-pieces consisting almost entirely of dialog. The most potent sequences owe much to the Sergio Leone school of long, slow, escalating tension finally bursting into brief but savage eruptions of violence. Terms like "Nazi Pulp Fiction" and "WWII Spaghetti Western" have been bandied about when discussing IB, and while a tad simplistic these labels are unquestionably apt.

Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Tennessee hillbilly with a ginormous Bowie knife, assembles a squad of Jewish-American soldiers for a special mission in Nazi-occupied France. They are to be parachuted behind enemy lines weeks before D-Day, dressed in civvies. Once on the ground they're to launch a campaign of wholesale slaughter in full violation of the Geneva Convention. There's no specific aim to the mission other than striking terror in the heart of every German soldier in France — that, and killin' Nazis. "Aldo the Apache" ups the ante by demanding that each of his "Basterds" owes him 100 Nazi scalps before they're through. The Jewish G.I.s, among them the eager, baseball bat-wielding "Bear Jew" (Eli Roth), are more than happy to oblige him. Renegade German soldier Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) soon joins the squad when the Basterds spring him from prison. (A notorious criminal, he was condemned for the murders of 13 Gestapo officers.)

Before long the Basterds have developed such a fearsome reputation that an exasperated Hitler (Martin Wuttke) forbids their even being mentioned by the German military. Meanwhile, in Paris, Nazi Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) schedules a gala premiere for his latest morale-boosting film: Nation's Pride, the true story of a Wehrmacht sniper who single-handedly killed over 300 American troops. High-ranking officials and glitterati of the Nazi regime are slated to attend. The event is to be held at the elegant Le Gamaar cinema owned by the alluring Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) — who, unbeknownst to the Gestapo, is actually a Jewess living under an assumed name. In charge of security for the premiere is the frighteningly efficient Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), the SS officer responsible for the massacre of Shosanna's entire family three years before.

British Intelligence is tipped off about the gala by celebrated German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), an undercover spy for the Allies. "Operation Kino" is quickly hatched to ensure that the premiere of Nation's Pride will be more eventful than Goebbels could ever imagine. A former film critic serving in the British army, fluent in German, is recruited to rendezvous with von Hammersmark in France. They'll need help, though, and that's where Aldo the Apache and his Basterds come in...

Tarantino supposedly worked on IB's screenplay, off and on, for almost a decade. Some instances of sloppy plotting lead me to believe that he didn't labor over the script quite long enough. To wit:

• Sharp-eyed Gestapo officer Maj. Hellstrom (August Diehl) — who "knows every German in France" — fails to recognize legendary Nazi slayer Hugo Stiglitz sitting right next to him.

• Bridget von Hammersmark's excuse for the fresh plaster cast on her leg — that she had an accident while mountain climbing — is so inane that it immediately confirms Landa's suspicions. ("And where in Paris is this mountain?") All she had to say was that she fell down the stairs at her hotel... but then Tarantino would've been deprived of making yet another reference to the German "mountain" films of G.W. Pabst and Leni Riefenstahl.

• Adolf Hitler, the most hated man in the world and target of numerous assassination attempts, has a security detail of exactly two (two!) bodyguards while attending an event in a hostile, occupied country. Tarantino tries to fudge this by stressing (during the restaurant scene) that the devious Landa is in charge of security for Hitler's visit to Paris, but I'm not buying it. A local SS colonel would NEVER be given that authority. Hitler's immediate physical safety was always entrusted to hand-picked men of the Fuhrerbegleitkommando. And certainly more than two of 'em!

• Where the hell is Himmler? Tarantino incorrectly labels Josef Goebbels as the "the Number Two Man in Hitler's Third Reich". He wasn't, not by a long shot. That would be Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS and Gestapo. Not only does Himmler not attend the Parisian premier, he's never even mentioned. (???) He could have easily been written into the script, glimpsed only in passing just as Nazi bigwigs Hermann Göring and Martin Bormann are. Was Tarantino too lazy to even bother with Wikipedia?

Of course, QT doesn't really give a fig about plot; he's all about the dialog and how cool everyone looks speaking it. The familiar men-on-a-mission tropes are thus almost completely dispensed with. British agent Lt. Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is told that he's to be dropped by parachute into France; the very next instant he's already there, teamed up with the Basterds and kitted out in full SS regalia, disguised as a German officer. Other than two (very) brief flashbacks, we never really see the Basterds do any kind of soldiering or commando stuff. Apparently Tarantino just wasn't interested in that. I suppose it doesn't hurt the film that nothing of the sort was included, but it seems to me that IB would've been strengthened by the addition of at least one battle scene. (Say, the ambush resulting in the capture of the German soldiers the Basterds are shown interrogating in the culvert during Chapter Two.) In a similar vein, the Hugo Stiglitz character is built up to be this totally badass killer yet ends up doing next to nothing before being removed from the story. Why not give us just a little bit more of this guy? As is, the film doesn't feel long despite the 2½ hour running time; an additional 4 or 5 minutes of combat wouldn't have made it seem any longer, and may have gone a little way in appeasing the grumblers who — not without some justification — thought a WWII movie called Inglourious Basterds, featuring Nazi-scalping American commandos, should have at least some action in it.

Now lest the reader get the impression that this is a negative review, let me briefly expound on the good, the great and the wunderbar in IB, which is considerable.

Warts and all, this is QT's best film since Pulp Fiction, certainly his most technically accomplished. The dialog, even when subtitled, is clever, sharp and interesting; wandering off on goofy conversational tangents, as what happened with Death Proof, is for the most part avoided. The chilling opening scene at the French farmhouse — a direct homage to Lee Van Cleef's introduction in The Good, the Bad & the Ugly — is brilliantly evocative filmmaking, ratcheting up the tension by agonizing degrees as the resolution we dread draws nigh. The haunting resignation to his death (by bat-bludgeoning) of the stoically brave German sergeant, Shosannah's preparations for the big premiere, and the final, fiery Götterdämmerung in the theater are all bravura sequences proving Tarantino a superb visual stylist when he has the inspiration. (He's not just all talk.) To accompany this vision he's chosen a sometimes wildly anachronistic soundtrack lifted from other films — Stiglitz gets the fuzz-guitar riff from 1972's Slaughter — that somehow, impossibly, works beautifully.

I cringed when I first saw/heard Brad Pitt in the trailer, thinking: He's not channeling Lee Marvin... He's a complete joke! Turns out, that's exactly it. He's supposed to be a joke, something I didn't realize until I actually watched the movie. Of all the characters with any significant amount of dialog, only Adolf Hitler and Pitt's Aldo Raine are expressly painted as human cartoons. (These two, the special forces lieutenant and the Nazi warlord, possess the most clear-cut sense of purpose. Which in the WWII of the Tarantinoverse means they're the comic relief!) With his cornpone drawl and facial grimaces Pitt is hilarious in the role, delivering an amusingly affected yet relaxed performance.

Mike Myers' turn as a British general smacks to me of unnecessary stunt casting (I can't but help hearing Austin Powers whenever he speaks with an English accent), but at least he doesn't embarrass himself. Both Mélanie Laurent and Diane Kruger are thoroughly excellent as the film's two very different femmes fatale — one beautiful but haunted, driven to the ultimate revenge; the other glamorous, brave and a little bit ruthless. Daniel Brühl's sensitive portrayal of the "German Audie Murphy", Pvt. Zoller, makes his character much more important to the story than it ordinarily might have been. As for Christoph Waltz, I can only add to the universal acclaim he's received for his star-making performance. Tarantino has stated that without the perfect actor in the part of the wily, chameleon-like Landa, he "didn't have a movie." Fortunately for us he found that perfect actor. Charming, funny and scary (in four languages, no less), Waltz essays the most fascinating and charismatic screen villain of the decade. Give the man that Oscar, you schweinhunds!

Y'all know the drill when it comes to new releases from a major studio… The widescreen (2.40:1) anamorphic transfer is virtually flawless, backed by an excellent 5.1 audio mix. (Gott im Himmel, are those gunshots ever loud!) As this is the single-disc edition, the only extras are a trio of extended/alternate scenes, the ‘complete’ version of Nation's Pride (6 min.), and a selection of trailers.

Inglourious Basterds is also available in a two-disc DVD Special Edition (with more extensive bonus features, notably a 30-minute roundtable discussion with Tarantino, Pitt and film critic Elvis Mitchell) as well as on Blu-ray. 12/22/09

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