Inglourious Basterds

a film directed by Quentin Tarantino

review written by jack floobles

January 12, 2010

Inglourious Basterds is a difficult movie to review. There are aspects of the film that are great. Beyond great. Near perfect. But these are coupled with scenes at which I can not help but cringe. Christoph Waltz, who plays Col. Hans Landa, is the clear standout in the cast. Brad Pitt brings some needed humor to the story. There are good roles here. There are good ideas. But as a whole, the movie is a mess.

The Basterds as they dub themselves is a group of special soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), whose sole mission in the war is to kill nazis. And in the most brutal fashion, they scalp them. At no time are the Nazis depicted as cruelly as The Basterds. We're used to films and books that paint a horrifying, ugly picture of the Nazis. But in Inglourious Basterds, the nazis are anything but. They're timid, weak, afraid of The Basterds, terrified of being scalped. I wonder if viewers will get the delicious irony that they are rooting for the guys who are excessively cruel while they hate and have no mercy for the timid soldiers doing their duty. The movie is most revealing, when one of The Basterds asks a soldier if he received the medal pinned to his chest for killing Jews, and the soldier replies that he received it for bravery.

I suppose Tarantino couldn't make a movie where the Nazis were the good guys, so instead, he made a movie where the good guys were worse than the Nazis.

There are high points in the movie. There are scenes of terrific action. But there are too many low points to ignore. Some scenes are so languid and dull, especially those featuring Shosanna (a young Jewish woman, played by Mélanie Laurent, seeking revenge against the Nazis for killing her family), that I couldn't fathom why more film wasn't left on the cutting room floor. Many scenes meant to leave you on the edge of the seat, instead leave you yawning and begging for it to end.

Take one scene in particular. British spies are posing as Nazis in a German bar. They are attempting to retrieve important information from a German actress working for the allies. On paper, the scene is ripe with tension, but on the screen, it goes flat. Typically, a Tarantino film is filled with degenerates, but they're degenerates we care about. Vincent Vega wasn't such a good guy, but I cared when he was blown away. But in Inglourious Basterds, I found I never really cared who was killed. It never mattered. There was too much going on in the movie with two many storylines to ever concern yourself completely with one character.

Overall, I think a trimmed down version, one without the unnecessary Shosanna in it, would be a huge relief. Many people have been bothered by Tarantino's misuse of historical fact in the film. Have people forgotten that hardly anyone was aware of the holocaust during the war? That it wasn't until after the war that many of the atrocities were revealed? So, a group called The Basterds seeking revenge against Nazis for killing Jews seems a bit odd...But that's besides the point, the movie isn't meant to be historical. If anything, it's meant to be a parody of other war movies.

the following actors/directors were tagged in this review: