REVIEW: INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS! - OMG Horror - The Blog of the Living Dead: Horror Movie News, Features, Reviews, Games, Free Horror Films, Splatter, Gore, Puppies

The films of Quentin Tarantino are difficult to codify. As a true cinephile and a man who wholly consumes film, the man loves to work in genre in a way that trumps the very conventions of the genre he’s attempting at the time. Reservoir Dogs, a heist picture sans a heist, is a crowning example of subverting the (crime) genre and making it something new, something fresh. And if Dogs is a cosmetic crime surgeon, so is Death Proof to the horror genre (exploitation fare to be more specific). And while his new film Inglourious Basterds is not quite a horror film proper, it’s hardly and out-and-out trench picture of war. He’s once again melded genre, flipped audience expectation, fusing humorous dialogue with balletic violence in a way that seems both familiar and new at once. In short, Basterds is a quintessential Tarantino experience. And as far as experiences go, this one’s pretty fuc*in’ hard!

We open in the French countryside. 1941. The Germans have occupied the land. We meet Colonel Hans Landa, played with a strong blend of menace and urbanity by Christoph Waltz (the clear standout in the film, as evidenced by his winning the acting Palme d’Or at Cannes). Landa is a high ranking investigator of sorts, a lingual tactician. He’s earned the name of “The Jew Hunter” for his ability to think like Jews and sniff them out wherever they’re hiding. We’re subjected to a 20 or so minute conversation between Landa and a French farmer over the possibility of harboring Jews subrosa. It’s pure Tarantino speak, hitting lyrical rhythms fraught with both irony and laugh-out-loud humor. The scene sets up Landa’s character, a man whose charm you fall for, his knowledge you’re scared of, and an unpredictability that carries through the rest of the film.

Cut to the Basterds, a coterie Jewish-American of Nazi poachers headed by good old Southern boy Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt – in a well known homage to Tarantino favorite Aldo Ray). Here’s a ragtag gang of hardened killers: Donnie “The Bear Jew” Donnoitz (Eli Roth - who Babe Ruth’s motherfucker’s to death), Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), a German defective who disembowels with the best of them, and Raine himself, a twang-spitting, swastika-forehead-carving badass with an even more badass garrote scar around his neck. These men are intent, and frankly famous for, scouring German ground and brutally dispatching any Nazis they happen upon. Not only that, the good Lieutenant has ordered each basterd to serve him 100 Nazi scalps. And, as the trailer professes, he wants his scalps!

Cut to 1944 Paris. We meet Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), the girl from the opening who survived an ambush and fled to the bright lights of the city. There she takes refuge as a cinema operator, an owner in fact. When a German soldier called Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) tries to woo her, she has none of it. At least not until she’s whisked away to meet propaganda master himself, Joseph Goebbels, who’s interested in premiering a big war picture at her little cinema. The film, entitled “Nation’s Pride” (directed by Eli Roth), chronicles the exploits of Zoller, who actually plays himself in the production. Shosanna, who’s been sitting on the pain and anger and thoughts of bloody comeuppance over the last four years, decides that on the night of the premiere, she and her lover Marcel (Jacky Ido) will ignite a giant pile of nitrate film prints and blow up the whole fuc*in’ theater. And with all the German high command in attendance, effectively end the war. Sounds simple, right? In a Tarantino flick, never!

The Basterds, once hearing of a British spy in the guise of German movie-star Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) being an allied contact, they decide the crash the party as well. Literally. When Aldo and a pair of basterds infiltrate the premiere, muttering awful Italian, they find themselves in direct confrontation (humorously, of course) with Landa, the “Jew Hunter.” All this culminates in a high octane spectacle, an action packed suicide mission (in effect) that sets up perhaps the most unpredictable part of the film. The resolution. The ending, again vintage Tarantino, never leads you to a place of expectation. And the final line of the film, as self-reflexive as his bouts of cinematic pastiche laced throughout the film (and all films, for that matter), is no better indication of Tarantino’s knowledge and vast awareness of all things cinematic.

And that’s really what the film is about: Tarantino’s seemingly unconditional love of movies. Not only does a large portion of the film take place at a cinema, its main military objective becomes that of sabotaging a film premiere. As atrocious and monstrous as Goebbels was, Tarantino illustrates how passionate he was about film, how he was the head of German film production, with well over 800 titles in his canon (perhaps not the wisest noun, haha). Through fellow love of film, Tarantino paints a different side of Goebbels that we haven’t seen before (not that he’s in anyway excusable). Also, as evidenced in the marquee above Shosanna’s theater, adoration for German films and filmmakers aren’t just used as scholastic pedantry, it actually serves as a plot function. He’s not peacocking his cinematic acumen; he’s actually employing it to tell a tale. And it’s a tale, frankly, not to be missed!