REVIEW: Inglourious Basterds1

Before I begin this review (which is the first one in quite some time now) I’d like to begin with saying that I’ve changed the review method slightly – no more 5-point based scoring-system. It’s hard to put a number on films, and I know that I might have a tendency to “overrate” a lot of films I see – which is why I’ve decided to just keep the review as a purely text-based thing and not something where I’ll just slap a number on it at the end. Anyway, let’s get this review underway!

I had been looking forward to Inglourious Basterds, the latest film from director Quentin Tarantino, for quite some time. Having watched the first trailer my expectations remained on the same heights, and once it had been very well recieved at the Cannes film festival, with Christoph Waltz winning the “Best Actor” award earlier this year, I just knew it: I had to see this film. Now.

Needless to say really, the film lived up to my expectations and in some cases, exceeded them – so what is it about really? Similar to other films by Tarantino (excluding Death Proof and Kill Bill) there are several smaller stories featuring their own main characters, that are intertwined at the end in a big, no-holds-barred confrontation – come to think of it, this makes it rather similar to the gangster films made by UK director Guy Ritchie. The story combines different actors with different spoken languages and in some cases, different genres into a mishmash of greatness. Speaking of languages, the dialouge in this film is really rather brilliant – all scenes with Christoph Waltz’s character Hans “The Jew Hunter” Linda are fantastic – the actor is clearly the perfect fit for the role, which in some scenes is the best villain Tarantino has put on screen to date. Not only is he a great actor who is like a ticking bomb to watch – calm one moment, aggresive and lethal the next – he also speakes several languages fluently throughout the film. It’s a joy to watch Hans Linda effortlessly switch from German to French to English to Italian. In one scene. And while we’re on the topic of Italian linguistics, a scene featuring Brad Pitt’s’ Tenesee-born Aldo Raine completely mastering the language. Sort of.

Brad Pitt leads a gang of undercover soldiers – the “Inglourious Basterds” – dropped into France a mere weeks before the American invasion during the 2nd World War. Their mission is simple: kill nazi soldiers – or as Aldo Raine puts it: “Nazi ain’t got no humanity and need to be dee-stroyed”. Among the Jewish, American soldiers Aldo Raine has recruited are some unknown and some fimilar faces – most notably Eli Roth (director of the two installations of Hostel as well as Cabin Fever) who plays Donny Donowitz, a character among enemies also known as “The Bear-Jew” with a fondness for baseball. Also great in the film is Til Schweiger who plays former German soldier turned Nazi-killer Hugo Stiglitz – I had previously only seen him in Uwe Boll’s Far Cry – a rather miserable film – but he’s absolutely fantastic in this. Other notable roles include Diane Krueger as a famous German actress who does a really good job with her role, as well as Mike Myers who plays a general in the British secret service – while he plays his role quite well, it’s still not quite up to par with the other actors who do an amazing job, and it all feels like a bit too much of Austin Powers shining through.

I could go into details on how the setpieces are great, the music (mainly pulled from 70′s spaghetti westerns) fits beautifully and how all the small twists and turns make it this dialouge-focused piece of film a joy to watch. I could even say that the first scene/chapter of the film is probably among the best scenes by Tarantino ever, but I’ll stick to the fact that the film was planned, shot, edited and finished in less than 8 months. The film consists of 5 chapters, which are basically long scenes that begin peacefully while the tension slowly builds throughout. And to think that there are, in total, a maximum of maybe 10 setpieces in the entire film with it’s runtime clocking over the 2h 40min mark – it never gets anywhere even close to not being highly entertaining, should be praise enough. Seriously, you should go see this film. Now. Twice.

More info: Trailer – Metacritic – Official Website

[UPDATE] Hope you enjoyed this new review format, check back tomorrow Wednesday evening for my review of the newly released sci-fi action film by debut director Neil Blomkamp, District 9!