Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds (2009)

88% on Rotten Tomatoes (out of 213 reviews)


Runtime: 153 minutes

Directed by: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Michael Fassbinder, Eli Roth

From: Weinstein Company/Universal

As I had stated already, previous to my viewing this motion picture, I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it or not. I mean, Tarantino’s hit or miss with me so I didn’t know what to expect.

To quote from a MySpace blog I wrote about the experience:

“To continue on with this, Saturday I went to Daytona Beach; I was hoping to go on the beach itself, but as the weather was ass, so I instead went and saw the movie Inglourious Basterds and then went to a nearby wrestling show. There was a lot of people in that screening and much to my surprise, they were actually patient with that 2 ½ hour movie, and it was filled with subtitled dialogue too. I really enjoyed it… until one plot point happened. At the time and even up to about Sunday I didn’t care for it and thought it really hampered the film. But, after some thought, I don’t think it’s as bad as I initially thought. I’ll still see it again to see if I view the movie any differently now… in short, I still recommend you see the movie, but like I said it has a good amount of subtitles, it’s a typical Tarantino movie filled with much dialogue, and what violence you get to see is pretty brutal (scalpings!), so as long as you know that… oh, and the Basterds aren’t as much of the story as you’d guess if you’ve only seen the commercials for it.”

To elaborate, I’m real interested in seeing this again (although I don’t plan on that to be until next week) as with a new perspective on it maybe I won’t be bugged by that one moment and if I see that as being better than I initially thought, I’m prepared to say this is the best thing that Quentin has ever done. Yes, even better than Pulp Fiction. This long tale is more about revenge and love of the cinema (no, really) than about the Basterds and their exploits, but the story is so magnificent-for the most part-and the acting from the actors all across America *and* Europe was quality stuff. Even Mike Myers was fine in the one scene he had, although I don’t know why he was in the movie, aside from him possibly being owed a favor by Tarantino, or maybe he just loves his British accent. Fair or not, I couldn’t help but think “Austin Powers” the entire time I heard Myers.

THE performance of the movie, though, was from Waltz as Landa, a “Jew Hunter” who was the main antagonist of the movie. He was so sly as a detective who could speak several different languages well and could manipulate people with ease. The opening scene that he had with the owner of a farm in France (Denis Menochet) proved this right away, and seeing the ending of the scene and how Denis slowly but surely reacted to what he ended up having to do was a very moving moment.

I won’t reveal much more as that may ruin things, but I’ll say that it’s more than one plot that you see in the film and it all comes together in a hot finale in Paris, and amongst the way you get talk about such stuff as German director G.W. Pabst, French food, shoes, and the “celebrity” game where you stick the name of a celebrity on your forehead and other people answer your questions to reveal the identity of who it is.

I'll be back in a few days with another movie or two to talk about here.