Inglourious Basterds sincerely is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece and his best movie to date. Now having said that, I have to admit I am not a huge fan of his past movies, but I truly love this one.
Inglourious Basterds is a movie that is way overdue because it changes up history and as Michael Fassbender told me at The Weinstein Company press day, “This is may be the film to end World War II films.” Not in a bad way, it changes up the stories that we’ve seeing over and over again on the big screen in recent years and with that this WWII epic shows us it is time to move on.
IB starts out with one of the best directed and acted scenes in any film I have seen in a really long time. To me this one chapter is Oscar worthy. Christoph Waltz, who masterfully plays a Nazi nicknamed The Jew Hunter, questions a French man in his native language about hiding a Jewish family in house during the time when the Nazi’s occupied his country. The interrogation goes off slowly and so calmly and as you sit there in your seat you feel the tension on the screen and squirm for the Frenchman brilliantly played by Denis Menochet. As the suspense builds The Jew Hunter asks, “This being your house, I ask your permission to switch to English for the remainder of the conversation.†Once this line is said you get the feel for how this movie is going to play out. You will be sitting on the edge of your seat engulfed with what you are watching and then Tarantino will throw in something in to relax you. Those tension breakers are what makes you love and appreciate the movie even more. Now when it comes to that line, it does make sense for that scene. And also saying that the movie is partially subtitled because the characters also speak in German and French besides English and you actually forget what is subtitled and what isn’t because the transitions are done so smoothly. Now when this scene comes to an end you will sit there in awe of what you just watched because it was just that amazing. On a side note, that is when I realized I should’ve gone to the bathroom before the movie, so that is my one mandate before you sit down…pee! Because the movie is almost 2 and a half hours long and you don’t want to miss a single second of it.
Next up we meet Hitler who through this conversation will introduce us to the Basterds and what a great group of Basterds they are. As we all know Brad Pitt plays the leader Lt Aldo Raine and he wants his 100 Nazi scalps! I think this is his best and funniest role yet. When I asked one of his men BJ Novak before I saw the movie about being in such a serious flick he told me, “You know what I didn’t think of it as a serious movie or at least I thought of it very much as a comedy as well as an intense, stylish, action movie.” At the time I stared at him in kind of dumbfounded by his words, but three days later when I saw the movie it really is a great way to sum it up. And when it comes to BJ’s role as The Little Man, he will play a big part at the end of it and he does it so well. We also meet a few others like Til Schweiger who plays Hugo Stiglitz, a German Basterd who is the only one to get a back story in this movie. One of the rumors is if QT goes through with the much-wanted prequel by the cast we will get more of them. Like the one for The Bear Jew played by Eli Roth that was already filmed with Cloris Leachman but did not make it the final cut. Eli’s entrance is slow and tense, but when he comes out of that cave all hell breaks loose as he plays baseball with a Nazi’s head. This scene is probably one of the most violent in the movie and it really isn’t that bad. I have a problem of laughing at violent scenes that I shouldn’t be, so I asked my friend to hit me if I did it during the screening. To my surprise I wasn’t the only cackling at the deaths, so if the violence was something that was going to stop you from seeing this movie, don’t let it because it isn’t anything that will give you nightmares. Back to Eli, his role will go down in the movie history books. This is the writer/director’s first major role and you would never know it because he plays it off as a pro. His Donny Dononowitz gets the most laugh and cheers in the movie.
From the Basterds we go to Paris where we catch up with the lone survivor of the Jewish family from the first chapter, Shoshana, played by the relatively unknown Melanie Laurent, who now owns a movie a theater, that will play a huge part for the rest of the movie. While she is changing the sign one night, a famous Nazi (unbeknownst to her) tries to catch her attention. Fredrick Zoller played by the gorgeous Daniel Bruhl (who makes me feel bad for thinking a Nazi could be so cute) had his story turned into a film called Nation’s Pride and he will eventually want it premiere at her theater. Nation’s Pride is the film within this film that was shot in black and white and will be the much needed comic relief you will need for the rest of the movie as we get snipets of the Eli Roth directed propaganda film. The premiere of this Zoller’s life story will attract the Third Reich’s biggest names including Hitler himself and those attendees will put forth a plan in Shoshana’s mind to get back at the people who inadvertently killed her whole family. At this point the movie goes from the seriousness of WWII to an action film where Shoshana on her own and the Basterds along with Diane Kruger will plot take down Hitler and his biggest names. I will stop my review here because I don’t want to spoil you with all the good sh!t that is going to down from this point on because remember how I told you earlier you will be sitting on the edge of your seats because of the suspense well now you are doing it with excitement. You will be waiting to watch it all play out and once it does, you will be high-fiving everyone around you because the movie will leave you feeling that good!
When the credits roll you will understand why everyone is saying that this is Quentin Tarantino’s masterpiece. What the Oscar winner did with Inglourious Basterds leaves me in awe. Not only did he write a script that will hopefully end all the other WWII scripts for a while. He directed a movie that will have you go through an array of emotions, but leaving with just one…thinking how f*cking brilliant those two and half hours were. And finally he put together a cast who no one one ups anyone, but all of them give the performances of a lifetime.
I can’t say enough good things about Inglourious Basterds and I am going to leave you with one more…stop reading this go out and see the movie now!!!
