Inglourious Basterds (2009)

July 25, 2010 · Posted in Reviews Drama, Thriller, War Quentin Tarantino Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Denis Menochet, Eli Roth, Melanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender USA

You probably heard we ain’t in the prisoner-takin’ business; we in the killin’ Nazi business.

Inglourious Basterds

Not quite the farcical, knockabout slapstick comedy fest the Japanese adverts led me to believe (I’ve included the trailer at the end of the review).

There are admittedly a couple of funny lines and some black comedic drama but more action drama than Abbot & Costello I think.

This movie is an alternative version of the “end” (I assume) of the second world war as seen through the imagination of Quentin Tarantino.

Starring a mutachioed Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine, Christoph Waltz as Colonel Hans Landa (for which he won a well deserved Ocar), and Eli Roth as Sgt Donny Donowitz amongst others. It involves a group of Jewish soldiers, nicknamed The Basterds by the Germans, sent to France to basically kill Nazis.

There’s also a second plot parallel to this involving a Jewish girl, Shosanna Dreyfuss played by Melanie Laurent with a traumatic background linked to the evil Nazi Hans Landa.

Both these plots converge at the end in an attempt to blow up the main leades of the Third Reich at a screening of Goebbles new propaganda movie “Stolz Der Nation (A Nation’s Pride)” at the Jewish girls cinema.

The film (directed and written by Tarantino) is well written and fairly well paced, although for my liking perhaps about 20-30 minutes too long and there are some excellent long scenes of dialogue (well it is Tarantino!) including a fantastic 20 odd minute opening scene in a farmhouse in France with Col. Hans Landa and Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet), as well as a great bar scene involving Nazis and undercover Allied spies.

Col Hans Landa : Oooh, that’s a bingo!
Col Hans Landa : Is that the way you say it? “That’s a bingo?”
Lt. Aldo Raine : You just say “bingo”.
Col Hans Landa : Bingo! How fun! But, I digress. Where were we?

Unfortunately I watched the Japanese DVD version of this film and I didn’t realise that most of the film is in French or German! I think only the scenes with Brad Pitt in are in English.
So obviously in Japan they subtitled the French and German (and English) into Japanese and there were no English subtitles, so I had to piece together my middle school French and German and the Japanese subtitles, to work out what was going on. Think I got most of it though – I learnt some new words in all three languages too.

I was actually quite impressed with Tarantino for doing this though, as with a lot of movies especially war movies it’s often curious that all the Germans speak English (and often are English or American), it loses some of the realism. Obviously it’s usually done as a large portion of cinema audiences refuse to watch a subtitled movie (hence America has to (usually badly) remake all the good foreign films – Ring, The Grudge, Dark Water, Infernal Affairs – as it seems the majority of Americans won’t watch them otherwise).

Inglourious Basterds - Eli Roth and Brad Pitt

Overall, I was impressed with Inglorious Basterds. I had great hopes for this film but was expecting to be disappointed. A film definitely worth seeing more than once I think to catch some more of the interplay between the characters and the subtle elements in the plot(s).