Inglourious Basterds

Because I've seen a number of Quentin Tarantino films, I was sure of several things about this movie before I even popped it in. I knew there would be sporadic but cartoonish violence. I knew there would be an homage to filmmaking in some way or another. I knew every main character was at risk of immediate and unpredictable death. I knew there'd be a close up or two of some lady feet. And I knew the movie would feature a substantial amount of well-written dialogue. But I did not know that the movie would be almost entirely dialogue and so light on action sequences. Now, I don't mean to infer any complaint with that statement. Two and a half hours of conversations - sometimes tense, sometimes silly, sometimes subtitled, sometimes not - made for an excellent movie and never felt forced, tired, or stale. And there was certainly enough violence and action to satisfy my, umm, bloodlust. It's just that, this being a World War II movie, I expected more battling and less scheming and interrogating. The movie seemed at least ostensibly to be about a group of Jewish American soldiers (the titular "Inglourious Basterds") running around France and sticking it to the Nazis one by one. I remember the trailers and promos implying as much. But the majority of the Basterds have ten lines of dialogue or fewer. Of the eight to ten of them, I think only Brad Pitt appeared in more than three or four scenes. The Basterds certainly earned their nickname, though, scalping every Nazi they killed in some sort of nod to the Apache Indians of America. But they really weren't the focal point of the film, as I alluded to above. Instead, the film's plot, in a nutshell, is that a bunch of top Nazis, including Hitler himself, are attending a film screening in Paris and two separate plots to blow up the theater are in place. One plot is concocted by Bradd Pitt's Basterds, but the other - and in my mind, the more compelling one - is led by the secretly Jewish woman who owns the theater. Now, in any other movie, you know both plots will fail, because you know Hitler doesn't get killed in a movie theater in Paris. But in a Tarantino flick, you just kind of expect him to play fast and loose with history. I won't spoil whether one, both, or neither of the plots gets carried out successfully, but the climactic sequence of events felt very satisfying to me. Actually, the entire movie did. There were a plethora of memorable characters and noteworthy scenes and Tarantino's trademark style was evident throughout. Ultimately this wasn't my favorite of his movies, but it definitely feels as well-made as any of them. Unless you really despise Tarantino (and I know a few who do) then this is definitely worth a watch, even if only because it so starkly contrasts with the gravity and austerity of nearly every other WWII film out there.