Inglourious Basterds
Directed by Quentin TarantinoAverage customer review:
Brad Pitt takes no prisoners in Quentin Tarantino’s high-octane WWII revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds. As war rages in Europe, a Nazi-scalping squad of American soldiers, known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” is on a daring mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Bursting with “action, hair-trigger suspense and a machine-gun spray of killer dialogue” (Peter Travers, Rolling Stone), Inglourious Basterds is “another Tarantino masterpiece” (Jake Hamilton, CBS-TV)!
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2 in DVD
- Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
- Released on: 2009-12-15
- Rating: R (Restricted)
- Aspect ratio: 2.40:1
- Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, DTS Surround Sound, Dubbed, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen
- Original language: English, French, Spanish
- Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
- Dubbed in: French, Spanish
- Number of discs: 2
- Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
- Running time: 153 minutes
Customer Reviews
Very, VERY entertaining but could have been a classic. One of the great pleasures of Quentin Tarantino movies is the wonderfully inventive casting that he employs. In PULP FICTION, he revived the career of John Travolta, made Samuel Jackson a star, pushed Bruce Willis into another echelon and even helped get Ving Rhames off to a good start. In JACKIE BROWN, he burnished Pam Grier & Robert Forster's careers. In KILL BILL, he reinvented Uma Thurman and reinvigorated David Carradine. Even in DEATH PROOF, he introduced the world to the amazing stuntwoman Zoe Bell and gave Kurt Russell the kind of part he's missed out on for too long.
And now, wonderfully, in INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, he's introduced the American viewer to some stellar European actors, namely Melanie Laurent and particularly Christoph Waltz, now an easy favorite for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
Tarantino also frequently tries the patience of his viewers with his rococo dialogue and insistence on constantly reminding us that we're watching a movie. In PULP FICTION, all his "habits" were fresh and new to most viewers (because, really, how many of us had seen RESERVOIR DOGS before we saw FICTION?), but over time, we learned that Tarantino was often just a little too pleased with his own screenwriting and often too pleased with his own directing. In a completely off-the-wall piece like the priceless KILL BILL films, everything worked to form a crazy-quilt whole. In INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, he's too clever for his own good at times.
BASTERDS tells the completely untrue story of how World War II might have ended had a group of bloodthirsty, highly trained American Jews been allowed to infiltrate Nazi occupied France with no mission other than to take Nazi scalps. Oh, and how that mission needed to collide with one fateful night when all the top leadership of Germany attended the gala opening of a new propaganda film held at a movie theatre owned by a beautiful French girl who was actually a Jew who had escaped a massacre that had taken her entire family and now she's bent on revenge at any cost. And of how her goal coincides with that of an undercover British agent who just happens to be a German film scholar and a German double agent who happens to be a movie star.
I know that sounds a little confusing. To Tarantino's credit, the plot as laid out in this 150 minute film is actually easy to follow. In fact, he's put everything into easy-to-digest chapters. It does ask us to believe that every important member of the German government & military would all assemble in a fairly public place at one time...but if you can get past that hurdle, there is much vicarious pleasure to be had in watching WWII reinvented by Tarantino.
By far, the best part of the film is Chapter 1. It features Waltz as SS officer Col. Hans Landa in what is easily the most chilling portrayal of a Nazi since Ralph Fiennes donned the uniform in SCHINDLER'S LIST. Fiennes role (and that entire brilliant movie) were for altogether different purposes. Landa comes off more like a Nazi Hannibal Lecter (without the strange dining preferences)...he's a bit of a lone wolf in his own party. He's feared by all, because he has a wonderful BS detector that helps him root out deception at every turn. In the opening scene, which plays out like a delicate one-act play, Landa comes to a humble French farmhouse and speaks with the owner. We know the owner is hiding Jews beneath his floorboard, and we're pretty sure Landa knows it too. Just how he gets that information, through one of the most tense interrogation scenes you'll ever see, is a joy to behold. You literally find yourself not breathing. I leaned forward in my seat. And yet there is never a raised voice, nor a threatening gesture. The screws are applied through intensity of manner. Waltz instantly makes his character a classic. Tarantino the writer has crafted brilliant dialogue, and Tarantino the director films it all with rare taste and simplicity, and Waltz knocks it out of the park.
The rest of the film is more uneven. While Brad Pitt is a goofy delight as Aldo Raine, leader of the Basterds...it's a performance that is more campy than believable. His Basterds, including folks like director Eli Roth and B.J. Novak from TV's "The Office" are fairly interchangeable. And strangely, we look forward to them conducting KILL BILL PT. ONE type mayhem, yet they actually use relatively little screentime showing them in action. There is one short, effective scene of their own brand of interrogation...but mostly we have to take the word of other characters (like Hitler himself) that these guys are wreaking havoc on the Nazis.
And during one jarring moment, we are introduced to one of the basterds with a blast of `70s era Blaxploitation music and a `70s era title card. Why? Yes, it was funny...but it took everyone totally out of the spell the movie was weaving. Just as having Michael Myers, in thick but unconvincing makeup, play a British officer hatching a scheme to blow up a movie theater, was very distracting. Myers accent is impeccable, and he plays the part straight...but he's still unmistakably Myers and many audience members snickered when they recognized him. Very distracting.
It's as though Tarantino doesn't quite believe that he can make a straightforward film and have it be riveting. Too bad...because when he gets out of his own way (as he mostly does in the climactic sequences of the film), INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is a cinematic treat. The gorgeous settings and lovely costumes even gave Tarantino a chance to show off and have it fit the tone of the film...but he still insists on going off the rails. "Hey, this is a Tarantino movie!" he seems to want to shout at us. And this causes him to get in the way of the stunning Melanie Laurant, who plays the vengeful theater owner. I've never seen her before, and she is an entrancing presence, whether in casual slacks or a gorgeous formal red dress. She dominates the final portions of the film.
I had a great time at this film, and I recommend it fairly highly. But with 10 minutes less of the sometimes too clever dialogue and 5 minutes less of Tarantino's showboating, and we might have had a true classic of suspense. See it, though, because the two performances I mentioned are worth the price of admission...heck, the opening scene is worth it.
Doesn't Walk the Line between Tragedy and Absurdist Comedy, but Embraces Both.
Quentin Tarantino likes to create art house/big budget films in traditionally low-budget genres or hybrids. That the films are simultaneously art house and big budget is a testament to his keen sense for what audiences enjoy that they probably didn't realize themselves. A copycat certainly; overrated perhaps; but I have to give the guy credit for his surprising commercial success with films that are essentially about other films. He's not always successful, but sometimes Tarantino hits the right note with his self-referential, genre-bending, absurdist bloodbaths. "Inglourious Basterds" is one of those times. The film takes its name and genre from the Italian 1978 "macaroni war" film whose title is spelled correctly. Who would have thought it possible to make a macaroni war flick appeal to modern audiences and make it funny to boot?
The setting is German-occupied France in the early 1940s. American Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and his team of 8 Jewish soldiers were air-dropped into France with the purpose of scaring the bejesus out of the German army by killing and scalping every Nazi in their sight. Their tactics are sufficiently extravagant to inspire fear in their enemies and furor in the Führer back in Berlin. Meanwhile, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish dairy farmer until her family was murdered by SS "Jew Hunter" Col. Hans Landa, is hiding in plain sight in Paris, where she operates a cinema under an assumed name. A smitten German soldier, Pvt. Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), campaigns for her theater to host a grand German movie premiere, while the British and the Basterds see the extravaganza as an opportunity to kill a lot of Nazis with one big bang.
"Inglourious Basterds" doesn't take trouble not to offend anyone. The Basterds are not just stereotypical brazen Americans, but sociopaths. The Brits are refined and organized, but effete and ineffectual. The Germans are overbearing, arrogant, and racist. Shosanna and her lover Marcel (Jacky Ido) are the only sympathetic characters, and their plans are not exactly virtuous. But they're all immensely entertaining. In Tarantino fashion, many scenes do nothing to further the plot. They're filled with the director's signature pop culture banter -World War II style, in three languages. Half the jokes are in subtitles. It works. Those scenes are in turns suspenseful and hilarious. Austrian actor Christoph Waltz deserves the abundant praise he has received for making Col. Landa a pleasant and ruthless bureaucrat. His vicious caricature somehow has great charisma. The plot does nothing more than build to the explosive showdown, but the dialogue is where the real action is.
The DVD (Universal 2009 single disc): Bonus features are 2 extended scenes, 1 alternate scene, 4 trailers (teaser, domestic trailer, international trailer, Japanese trailer), and "Nation's Pride Full Feature" (6 min), which is the entirety of the Zoller biographical film we see in the film, entitled "Stolz der Nation" in German. Subtitles for the film are available in English SDH, Spanish, and French. Dubbing is available in French and Spanish, though I'm not certain if all of the dialogue is dubbed. "Inglourious Basterds" characters speak three languages: English, French, and German, so the film is intended to be viewed with subtitles.
Uneven and disappointing
The opening scene with Aldo Raine stating his mission to his "Bastards" will be about the last riviting scene you will see until the very end. Yes, Christoph Waltz is brilliant, but he and the other actors are harmed by Tarentino's overindulgence and his vision of himself as auteur, when here he's ultimately a derivitive hack. I had high hopes for this one, but the trailer was better edited than the film. A story that's basically a "what if" fantasy must keep an almost break-neck pace to maintain your suspension of disbelief, but the director failed with scenes running too long and destroying the tension. The clever and supposedly resourceful Raine looks like and idiot when he leaves behind two bodies that can be easily identified and the viewer is left unsatisfied when the character Shoshanna is denied the specific revenge the story needs to be fulfilling. Go head and watch it out of curiosity, but don't expect to care about watching it again. Unless, of course, if you like the blood and gore for it's own sake, but here it's so prosaic and "we've seen it all before" that I yawned. Maybe you'll enjoy long draggy scenes with card games and little falters as actors reveal that they are acting but I think Tarentino spoiled all the fun. And if you're going to trample all over the war and the vets and victims you better make sure it's fun
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