Quentin Tarantino may have established himself as king of the "Cinema of Cool" with essential films such as Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, but he's often come under critical fire for merely regurgitating segments from his favorite pictures. Certainly the one-time video store clerk and seemingly superhuman cinema sponge overtly pays homage to those flicks he's deemed worthy, a tendency that repeatedly puts him under fire for not living life before commenting on it.
What this argument fails to consider is that perhaps in the celluloid-addled brain of Tarantino, his experiences both outside and within the multiplexes have become inseparable. Thus a true tale of a warrant being issued due to unpaid traffic tickets becomes dialogue for gangsters who later reenact a shootout from the seminal Ringo Lam heist movie City On Fire. This talent for using history to fatten fantasy is a key element of Tarantino's newest film - the bloodthirsty World War II revenge saga Inglourious Basterds.
Quentin In Movieland - Tarantino Versus The Third Reich
Inglourious Basterds has been a pet project germinating since well before Tarantino's gory two-part chopsocky smörgåsbord Kill Bill. The delay in its fruition was partially due to the lack of a proper ending, though casting was no less crucial to the film's success - especially the role of the film's primary antagonist, the cruel yet charming Nazi officer Hans Landa.
Austrian actor Christoph Waltz is nothing less than a revelation as Landa, a silky smooth murder machine known to his peers as "The Jew Hunter". The film begins with a nod to Italian director Sergio Leone in a protracted scene detailing Landa's visit to a French dairy farm. This casual courtesy call soon mutates into an intricately scripted interrogation that ultimately reveals the location of Jewish refugees within the house.
The sole survivor of Landa's attack is a young woman named Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), who later reinvents herself as a French cinematheque proprietress. Her love for projected drama makes her the unlikely acquaintance of one Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl), a German war hero whose slaughter of hundreds of US soldiers has landed him the dubious of honor of starring in A Nation's Pride - a new propaganda film about his savage exploits.
While Zoller's amorous inclinations disgust Shoshanna, an opportunity nonetheless arises to showcase his picture at her theater - with hundreds of Nazi officials in attendance. While this is enough fodder for any other full-length feature, Tarantino also weaves in the titular story of The Basterds - a secret OSS force largely comprised of Jewish American soldiers.
A Basterd's Work Is Never Done - But Brad Pitt Does It Again
Brad Pitt is in top form as the ignorant wacko Aldo Raine, a drawling death dealer who would deny his enemy any semblance of humanity. In his world, all Nazis are to be disposed of or marked - the latter being achieved by carving rudimentary swastikas into their foreheads. The rest of the Basterds are similarly over the top - from the baseball-bat wielding "Bear Jew" (Hostel director Eli Roth) to the stab-happy ex-Wehrmacht nutcase Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger).
Eventually these loose plot threads become one as The Basterds get assigned to "Operation Kino" - none other than a suicidal mission to murder Third Reich bigwigs (including Joseph Goebbels and Hitler himself) during the film premiere at Shoshanna's theater. This ploy introduces the gang to British Lieutenant Archie Hickox (Michael Fassbender) and Diane Kruger's turncoat German actress Bridget Von Hammersmark. From there, sheer lunacy ensues.
Film As A Weapon - The Perfect Tarantino Revenge
While Kill Bill threatened to collapse under the weight of its Frankenstein-esque limbs, Inglourious Basterds soars without its stitched up sources getting the better of it. Undoubtedly "cooler-than-thou" viewers will delight in one-upping Tarantino by deciphering his many nods to obscure exploitation gems and art house classics, yet the final word is that the total product works as its own beast.
Those expecting the guts-n'-guns viscera promised by the trailer will perhaps tire of the sheer amount of conversation in the film. Yet in Quentin's world, talk is action. Every beat of his Howard Hawks-style dialogue is like a civilized gunfight, slowly building in intensity until it boils out of the speaker with a physical response. This prolonged set-up followed by a shockingly explosive punch line is quintessential Tarantino, and is used to great ends here.
The visuals are no less stunning, and thanks to returning Kill Bill cinematographer Robert Richardson this is by far the most beautiful film in Quentin's filmography. Imagery of piled film reels juxtaposed against footage of spent sniper rounds is pure visual poetry. It may have taken him fifteen years to rival his work on Pulp Fiction, but Quentin Tarantino has finally done it!
Rating: 9/10
- Inglourious Basterds
- Written and Directed by Quentin Tarantino
- Starring Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Christoph Waltz, Mike Myers, Mélanie Laurent
- Running time: 153 minutes
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