Fun at the expense of "Natzis"

If you're a fan of Quentin Tarantino, you'll love his new film 'Inglourious Basterds.' If you're not of fan of his and his unique directing style, you probably won't. I fall into the category of 'fan,' so naturally I loved it. It's a throwback to his great films, like 'Pulp Fiction' and both 'Kill Bills'', and better than his mediocre 'Death Proof.'

The film is vintage Tarantino through and through, starting with the opening credits, which roll with a spaghetti-western tune before a single scene of the movie is shown. This film has chapters, like 'Kill Bill' beginning with number one, which is titled, "Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France." The opening scene is so Tarantino, so built up and epic, and it sets the tone for the whole movie. To make a long story short, an idyllic scene of the French countryside in 1941 is shattered when SS agents, led by Col. Hans Landa, find and kill a Jewish family hiding in a house. One of the Jews, a teenage girl named Shoshana, escapes the massacre. Landa, by the way, is played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz, who may very well win an Oscar for his gleeful portrayal of a heartless, merciless SS agent. The scene is beautifully shot, and it features great dialouge, a trademark of awesome QT films.

We next are introduced to the Basterds, a group of American-Jewish soldiers working guerilla missions in Europe taking out and scalping as many Nazis as possible. Brad Pitt plays Lieutant Aldo Raine, who claims he has Indian blood and goes by "Aldo the Apache." He's from Tennesse, and has an accent to match; he pronounces 'nazis' as 'NAT-zis' and he is generally hilarious throughout the film. My favorite line of the movie comes in this scene, when Aldo tells a Nazi prisoner, "Well, that's exactly the response we were hoping for cause watchin' Donnie bash Nat-zis heads in with a baseball bat is like going to the movies for us." "The Bear Jew," or Donnie, proceeds to do just that. The crew also has an Austrian born members and a German member that the Basterds helped escape from prison so he could join in their rampage. The Basterds goal is to match the Nazis at their game of ruthless killings.

Our third scene finds the escaped Jew from France, Shoshana, now living in Paris 3 years later. She is the owner of a movie cinema, and keeps to herself. But when the Nazis want to use her theater for a movie premiere, the intersection of all the stories comes to fruition. As you can tell from this simple description, the plot is classic QT, where it mixes in different storylines to tell one total story that in the end, all makes sense.

The film is excellent, and like 'Pulp Fiction,' makes great use of flashbacks to describe how a character came to be a certain way, or do a certain thing. This is one of my favorite trademarks of Tarantino, and he does it masterfully in this film. It's an epic, clocking in at just over 2 hours 30 minutes, but the prolonged, tense scenes he utilizes make the time worth it, and important. I can't really think of a point he could have shortened or cut entirely from the movie. I also really enjoyed the flawless use of multiple languages; French, German, English and Italian are some of the languages spoken, so if you don't like reading subtitles, don't go see this movie. At it's base, it's a revenge movie on those Nazis, so kind of unrealistic, but none of that took anything away from it. You'll also notice the voices of two Tarantino mainstays throughout the film: Samuel L. Jackson, who acts as a narrator, and Harvey Keitel, who acts as an American military commander. Both actors were stars in 'Pulp Fiction' and Tarantino loves little things like using favorite actors, even for small things like this.

Like I said, I highly recommend this film. It's still running at the Polson Showboat for at least this upcoming week, so go see it while it's playing. 'Inglourious Basterds' is rated R for violence, language, and cause it's a freakin' Quentin Tarantino movie. That should tell you what you're gonna get.

This is the first movie I'll implement my star system of ratings. I'll give each film I watch from now on a number of stars out of 10. This film I give 8 out of 10; I really liked it, and may even go see it again. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did.