Movie Review
Inglourious Basterds
Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Runtime: 2:32

Very rarely do you come across a film in which you can perfectly understand why someone may hate the film while you yourself can still see enough merit in the film to recommend it to others. Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds is one of those films. The film has many issues (mainly concerning the length or more specifically, why it is so long) but it’s still an extremely enjoyable film that is seeping with Tarantino’s trademark styles.

Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, a Jewish-American soldier during World War II. He commands over only a few soldiers but they are one of the dangerous groups of soldiers the Allies have. Raine’s outfit, The Inglourious Basterds, are known for ambushing German soldiers and massacring them to the point where farfetched stories about who this gruesome group is widespread throughout the German ranks.

Another part of the story comes from Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent). Dreyfus is a Jewish-French woman who flees from her countryside home after the place she was hiding was found by Standartenführer Hans Landa (Christop Waltz) and her family killed. She manages to escape and takes up a new identity as the young owner of a cinema in Paris. She runs into a problem when a young German soldier named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) becomes smitten with her. The problem snowballs when she finds out that Zoller is a big war hero for the German people as he was able to kill hundreds of allied soldiers while defending an outpost.

Zoller’s exploits are considered so important by the top brass of the German army that a film is commissioned about Zoller’s experience (starring Zoller himself). In attempt to impress Dreyfus (going by her alias of Emmanuelle Mimieux), Zoller convinces the director and chief propogandaist of the German army, Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to have the premiere at Dreyfus’s little cinema. With all the top German army personnel planning to attend, Dreyfus hatches a plan to get revenge for the brutal death of the family. When word spreads about the premiere, the Basterds also have fatal plans for the German officers planning to attend the show too.

If there’s one thing that Tarantino must be praised for as a director, is that he gives his actors dialogue and screen time to work with. The acting performances are superb by all. Most notable of all is Waltz who could very well take home a lot of gold come awards season. Waltz nearly steals the show as the Nazi detective that can be as cruel and cold-blooded as he is charming and whimsical. Pitt and Laurent are fantastic even with the limited amount of emotions that their characters are permitted to show. Even the actors with smaller roles are given the chance to shine. Not all is perfect, though. Mike Myers was there doing his cornball British shtick again which grew old during his Saturday Night Live days although it could be argued that it does fit contextually with the movie. Other would find it lame.

The major issue with the film is that it clocks in at two and a half hours only because several of the scenes go on for what feels like forever. The opening “chapter” is very much longer than it should be. Landa is in a dairy farmer’s house questioning him about hiding Jews in a scene that takes around fifteen minutes. In the end, Landa gets the farmer to admit he’s hiding Jews and calls soldiers in to execute them. There’s a lot of dialogue going back and forth between the farmer and Landa but most of it goes nowhere. They beat around the bush for far too long. While the intention might be to create a heightened sense of drama, it can become tedious and boring. There are several instances like this where the scenes feel way too long and could have easily been truncated to a quarter of their length. Other scenes like those with Brühl and Laurent seem to trail on (although it can be argued that in that instance, it shows that Brühl’s character cannot comprehend that he’s unwanted). Unlike Taratino’s other movies like Pulp Fiction, the prolonged dialogue scenes in this movie are not all that memorable nor do they offer the film anything other than to soak up a large amount of time.

One annoyance for some is that this film gives the impression at first that it works within the confines of actual historical events. The events of World War II such as the Normandy invasion are referenced in the movie and it makes one think that the move has to work (or is confined) to the events that actually took place. Halfway through the movie, it becomes obvious that this isn’t the case and the movie begins to rewrite history to an impossible degree. While the movie never tries to give the impression you’re watching a true window into history, it does feel deflating when you realize that anything can happen because Tarantino has rewritten history. Without giving away the ending, it would have been a more satisfying film had the writer/director worked with the material that history gave him instead of keeping things strictly factual in some ways and completely made up in others.

Inglourious Basterds is a very good film although by Tarantino standards, it could be considered a bit of a disappointment. The performances are fantastic but while the story is good, it sort of lets the actors down. It’s hard to tell where it’s coming from as the story can be hard to swallow at times. The acting makes the movie though and if there is no way this movie could have been any good if Tarantino was dealing with random actors. The right people played the right roles exceptionally well. The performances make the movie. Overall, the movie is enjoyable although at times unsatisfying.

☆☆☆