Inglorious Basterds 2009
Sometimes the best war movies are the realistic ones, and sometimes they are something like Inglorious Basterds. Quentin Tarantino seems to have had mixed success since exploding onto the scene with Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. He has tried some of his favorite old genres of movies and sometimes pays too much attention to the homage and not enough to the movie (Kill Bill). Here the reverence is intact, but he is really doing something with it, too. Despite previews that put Brad Pitt and his group of comically sinister behind-the-lines Basterds front-and-center, there is a far more complex story and Pitt plays only one (of the more caricatured) in a cast of indelible characters that features uncannily shrewd Nazis and Tarantino’s patented vengeful leading woman (a French actress playing a frenchwoman, what a concept!).
There are showdowns galore as one character faces down another, usually mentally. He has created one of the greatest villains of all time in SS Colonel Hans Lunda, played perfectly by Christoph Waltz (a German, well an Austrian so partial credit, playing a German!). There is still plenty of violence with lots of people killed by machine guns and also some graphic scalpings, though not as much as I thought there would be. The movie is divided into chapters and really only one of them focuses on Pitt’s character terrorizing Nazis. The movie sags a bit in the middle and the majority is probably subtitled French, German, or Italian. Though it is a fairly long movie (153 minutes) it feels like a lot had to be left out and all of the characters are deeper than what we are seeing, almost like he has taken four or five movies and mashed them together to tell a complete story, while leaving most of the film edited out into a heap behind the movie screen.
If you like Tarantino and don’t mind watching Brad Pitt ham it up, this movie is not to be missed. Though it doesn’t take itself as seriously as Pulp Fiction, this is probably his best movie since then. A-.
Written: 31 May 2010
Owned on: Blu-ray, Digital