Inglourious Basterds

*****
Four Stars out of Five


Well, it's finally here. The movie Tarantino has been teasing fans with for over a decade. The movie that he's always wanted to make. He finally got to make the damn thing, and it was never a question of "if" it would fail to meet it's ridiculously high expectations, it was simply a matter "how disappointing is it?" The answer to that question is easy: Not very.

I need to preface this review by stating that this movie (and it is a movie, not a film... more on that later) is not what you think it is. Not even fucking close, if you've seen any of the previews, TV spots, or hell, even the movie posters. You're led to believe that what Quentin Tarantino and Co. have made is a two and a half hour long movie of watching Jewish-American soldiers scalping and brutally murdering Nazis is France during WWII. In actuality, we get about eight minutes of this, but that's not the point. Tarantino movies are never really what you think they're going to be - "Kill Bill" was a revenge-based movie in which The Bride struggles with actually killing Bill; not exactly what you'd expect from a movie with that title. "Reservoir Dogs" is a heist movie that doesn't even show the heist, it's about the aftermath. "Death Proof" was supposed to be a slasher movie centered on a psychotic stunt man who crashes his car into unsuspecting women; Stuntman Mike turned out to be a pussy. See, that's what special about a director like Quentin Tarantino. He takes your expectations, builds them up through marketing, and then once you finally get to see the movie, he essentially skull-fucks your expectations into submission by delivering something very unexpected. However, in this modern age of the internet, everything gets spoiled eventually, so it is nice to be able to see something unexpected every once in a while. Your expectations need to be thrown aside before you see this movie to truly enjoy it, otherwise you'll simply be let down by the fact that you expected non-stop Jew-on-Nazi violence.

Shifting gears, I want to talk about what the movie is not what it isn't. It is an "alternate-reality" take on WWII and several factions of individuals during this era. The eponymous (and certainly most-loved) group is the Basterds, a squad of Jewish-American soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (a spectacular Brad Pitt, more on that later), whose sole job is to kill Nazis. Then there is Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) of the SS who is nicknamed the "Jew Hunter." Shosanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent) is the Jewish girl who escapes from Landa and goes on to run a cinema in Paris - the location of the premiere Goebbels' latest propaganda film. The other "main" character is Bridget Von Hammersmack (Diane Kruger), a British double-agent undercover as a German actress, whose job it is to get the Basterds into the film premiere.

For fear of heavy-duty spoilers, I will forego any more attempts at a plot synopsis and instead analyze the film's acting, writing/directing, and pacing issues. As is typical of every Tarantino flick, the acting here is, well, fucking amazing. Seriously, like, other-worldly, Holy-motherfucking-fuck-amazing. If Christoph Waltz and Brad Pitt - hell, even Eli Roth - don't get Oscar nominations for their performances, I'll give up on the Academy forever. Brad Pitt as Aldo Raine is a revelation. The moment you see him on screen, his tabloid-fodder wife and 34 kids disappear. He's not especially handsome here, either, which helps contribute to the overall bad-ass aura surrounding him. Pitt brings a level of confidence to the role that makes you wonder who the hell else could have played Aldo Raine. He's got a southern drawl here, and his delivery is spot-on for every single word he says. I thought Pitt was excellent in "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" last year (I still think that it was the best film of the year, but that's another story for yet another time), but this is easily his best performance since "Fight Club," perhaps even eclipsing that here. Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa is perhaps even better. You want this fucker to die every time he's on screen, but he's just so... intoxicating as the evil bastard that you kind of want to buy him a strudel before shooting him. Waltz, whom I've never even heard of before, is incredibly adept at balancing the audience between endearment and utter contempt that one might be so bold as to say this is on par with Anthony Hopkins in "Silence of the Lambs." What could have been a cardboard cut-out villain is transformed into a multi-faceted, completely fleshed-out character here, and a lot of that has to do with Waltz's performance.

While Waltz and Pitt will receive most of the fanfare for their performances, everyone else in the film ranges from good to excellent. I would be completely remiss if I failed to mention Eli Roth here. The writer/director of horror flicks like "Cabin Fever" and both "Hostel" and "Hostel: Part II" hits a home run (you'll get this pun after watching the movie) as Donny Donowitz, nicknamed the "Bear Jew." Roth gained 35 pounds of muscle for the role, and completely transformed into a bat-wielding, blood-lusting soldier. He steals every scene he appears in, and the look on his face - and subsequent comments - when he sees Adolf Hitler at the premiere is priceless. Diane Kruger and Melanie Laurent both turn in serviceable performances as the main women in the flick, yet neither will be made huge stars because of this. Another notable performance is BJ Novak (Ryan, on "The Office"), as one of the Basterds. His dry delivery works wonders here, and he gives the audience several moments of black comedy gold.

When talking about Tarantino, three things are always a given - 1.) He always has great acting (see above). 2.) His dialogue is second to none. And 3.) The guy will never get over his pacing issues as a director. As I've already conquered the acting aspect of "Basterds," it's time to talk about the script. It's fucking glorious (or is it "glourious?"). Nobody can write characters like QT. Nobody. Every scene involving the Basterds and/or Landa jump right off the screen, and a lot of that is attributed to the words QT has written for them. However, some of it struggles as a good 2/3 of the movie is in subtitles. It's hard for me to appreciate witty sentences when I'm reading them on the screen, and not being able to understand what's be enunciated because the actor is speaking in German or French. This has never been a problem for QT before, as all of his previous movies were predominantly English-speaking movies, yet it can be a problem here.

Then, there's the issue of the movie's pacing. It's over two and a half hours long, and it probably doesn't need to be. If there's anything I know about QT, it's that the guy can't kill babies. One of the first things they teach you at film school - I wanted to go, but reality set in - is that you have to be willing to cut any scene, even if it's your favorite, if it slows down the narrative. These scenes become a director's "baby" and sometimes, they have to kill their babies in order for the film to be more cohesive, and better paced. QT never kills his babies, sometimes at the detriment of the narrative. "Kill Bill" was split into two parts because he couldn't trim any of the fat (I'm not complaining here, I just wanted to point out a couple examples), and "Death Proof" was at least 20 minutes too long. This is an issue, yet again, in "Inglourious Basterds." There are certain scenes that could have been eliminated, and others that needed to be trimmed for conciseness. Tarantino loves long, meandering scenes only to punctuate their conclusions with unexpected violence, or something comparatively shocking. He succeeds about 75% of the time here, with that remaining 25% of scenes lasting just a little too long.

At the end of the day, "Inglourious Basterds" is not a movie for everyone. In fact, I suspect that a large majority of the opening weekend populace will be disappointed, or flat out dislike it. That's fine, but don't count me among them. While it's not quite the masterpiece I'd wanted, or been waiting for, it's still the year's best movie so far, and is sandwiched, for me, somewhere in between "Jackie Brown" and "Reservoir Dogs." It's a four star movie out of five, and it's damn good. Go watch it if you enjoy great acting, can handle quite a bit of violence, and are willing to take some historical mash-ups in place of accuracy.

Tarantino's filmography for me now ranks something like this:
1.) Pulp Fiction
2.) Jackie Brown
3.) Inglourious Basterds
4.) Reservoir Dogs
5.) Kill Bill vol. 1 & 2
6.) Death Proof


---------------SPOILERS--------------------------------

For those who have seen the movie, or don't mind spoilers, it goes without saying that "Inglourious Basterds" rewrites history by having the Basterds kill Hitler, Goebbels, Boorman, and more Nazi scum in a movie theater. I can see how some might be offended by this change in history, but it is important to remember that QT is a movie-maker, not a filmmaker. He's in the business of telling entertaining stories that are engaging, fun, and thought-provoking. Not factual. I can't imagine another ending for this particular movie, and there is certainly something cathartic about seeing the Bear Jew shooting Hitler and Goebbels with a machine gun, and then continuing to shoot their bloodied faces once they're dead. This is an entirely fictional story that just so happens to include some real people in it. It's incidental. The movie doesn't proclaim to be historically accurate. It's just a movie. But it's a good fucking movie.