Inglourious Basterds

Spanks - 3

Director - Quentin Tarantino

Writer - Quentin Tarantino

Starring - Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth & Diane Kruger

Release Date - 21 August 09

MPAA Rating - R

Inglourious Basterds is the latest film from Quentin Tarantino and his first war movie (or a spaghetti western but with World War II iconography if you ask him). The film is set in World War II Europe, but that is the only thing that historically accurate in the film. Historical figures are in the film by name only, because their personalities and actions are altered to fit in this "alternate universe". Like most of Tarantino's movies, this one follows a multiple story lines that somehow and at some point cross each other.

The three stories Inglourious Basterds follows are of Colonel Hans Landa, a Nazi officer who is very good at searching France for hiding Jews. Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish French girl who runs a movie theater in Paris who agrees to let the Nazis use the theater so she can lock the Nazi officers inside and burn it down. The last is of Aldo Raine and "The Basterds", a group of 8 US soldiers who drop into occupied France whose orders are to kill Nazis until the Allies get news of the Nazi movie premiere, then they are ordered to assist a British film critic in an attack on the theater.

The trailer for the film makes it seem like it is just about Brad Pitt and his men running around tormenting and killing Nazis. The actual screen time showing them at work is very little. The stories involving Hans Landa and Shosanna Dreyfus are followed more. I didn't know of the other stories before seeing the film so I was disappointed. Now knowing that the movie is more than that, I might like it more the second time around.

The film is very Tarantino in that there is lots and lots of dialog used to tell the story, unlike most war movies where the visuals tell a lot of the story. The film does have a good share of comedy written in. Everything Hans Landa says is funny, but sometimes is the way he says what he is saying and not what he is saying. Christoph Waltz who plays Landa better win an Oscar for his performance, because it was flawless.