Inglorious Basterds--Review and Reaction

SS Colonel Landa got the nickname "the Jew Hunter" due to his ability to hunt down Jews for the Nazis during the Second World War. After witnessing the massacre of her family at the hands of Landa, Shosanna Dreyfus vows revenge against the Nazis.

Meanwhile, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembled a squad of eight Jewish-American soldiers with the sole purpose of killing Nazis and spreading terror.

Years pass, and the Germans created a propaganda film that will be showcased to high Nazi party officials. Little do they know that Shosanna owns that theater and has concocted a plan for revenge. At the same time, the Basterds are notified by their high command of their own plan to assassinate the same members of the Nazi party at the same movie event. Of course, neither Shosanna nor the Allies have any knowledge of each others' plans.

Inglorious Basterds is a very typical Tarantino film and a very atypical World War 2 feature, though, as expected, both these aspects go hand-in-hand. The first thing that you will probably notice is how long the movie is. A lot of it is due to the slow speed at the beginning. Many of the earlier scenes were pretty dialogue heavy in order to set the viewer up with what is to come later on, particularly both plots involving the movie event.

Also, the movie's violent scenes are....pretty violent as Inglorious Basterds does have a pretty high body count. However, there aren't very many of those scenes. Again, with the exception of the massacre towards the beginning and an introduction to the Basterds' methods of warfare, the first half of the movie was generally pretty light with action sequences and focused more on character development and setting up for the climax. Thus, I think this movie does require some patience as many things, such as Donny's introduction, get really drawn out.

By the way, this IS a Tarantino movie, so the violent parts can get pretty graphic (Aldo requires his men to scalp Nazis they kill). In addition, like other Tarantino movies, the characters' dialogue is pretty laced with profanity and there was also a pretty raunchy scene involving Joseph Goebbels. So for the record, kids should not be seeing this movie. I'm very sincere when I say that. Like many of Tarantino's other famous movies, Inglorious Basterds very well deserved its R rating.

Inglorious Basterds started off with a serious enough tone, yet the movie began to take itself less and less seriously as it progressed. That can be measured by the significance Aldo has on-screen as he provides a very significant portion of the movie's very black humor. I really have to take my hat off to Brad Pitt in his portrayal of Aldo as he very much was the spirit of the movie.

Inglorious Basterds as a whole was pretty well-acted. Diane Kruger essentially plays herself as a major German film star. Also, Christoph Waltz was nearly perfect as Landa. Martin Wuttke was no Bruno Ganz, but he got the job done as Hitler.

Throughout, there was a highly anachronistic, yet very fitting soundtrack. A pretty good chunk of the music in Inglorious Basterds was made of hard rock music. Again, Inglorious Basterds set out to be a Tarantino movie first, World War 2 feature.....I don't know where as this was pretty low on its priorities.

On the whole, if you are looking for some black comedy with some pretty sweet acting and clever dialogue and are mature enough to handle some of the content and have the patience for the somewhat heavy-handed story, then I have to wholeheartedly recommend Inglorious Basterds. Also, if you really want proof as to how this is an atypical World War 2 film, all you have to do is bear witness to how the movie ends.

Score: 3.5/4