Inglourious Basterds.
Hold the lights. Stop the explosions. Inglourious Basterds reminds you that it takes more than smokes and mirrors to create an excellent film. Quentin Tarantino is a film genius as proven from Pulp Fiction to Death Proof to Kill Bill. Inglourious Basterd takes on the Tarantino formula of applying healthy cast of misfit characters + fairly simple storyline and manages to make it fun, tongue in cheek, clever, poignant, and most of all hilariously entertaining.
(The movie runs around 153 minutes, 3 minutes longer than the bullshit that is Transformers 2. Unlike T2, I didn’t pray and hope that each line Shia delivered be his last.)
Perhaps its Tarantino’s classic breakdown of the story arcs, maybe its because of the Tarantino’s movies are not disturbingly “deep.” Perhaps it’s the clever inserts of back stories he likes to provide. You find yourself invested in the characters and hoping that they’ll survive the imminent diaster.
There are two running storylines. On one side, we follow Brad Pitt and his team of “Basterds” as they hunt and brutally kill Nazis. His team hatches a plan to blow up the theatre during a German movie premiere.
On another, we witness the escape of Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish refugee, and the viewer meets up with her several years later when she is living under the name “Emmanuelle Mimieux” and reluctantly becomes the object of affection for German war hero Fredrick Zoller.
Zoller convinces her to allow his new film “Nation’s Pride” to be premiered at her cinema citing that all of Germany’s highest ranking officers will be there including Hitler, the same event that the Basterds plan to bomb.
Though Brad Pitt garnered a lot of media attention for the film, Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) held a bigger role and carried most of the movie. The secondary actors are brilliant in their roles as well especially the hilarious cast of the “Basterds” including Eli Roth as Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz aka the bat swinging “Bear Jew”.
Inglourious Basterds is a must see. Twice.
