INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is Quentin Tarantino’s
World War II wish fulfillment fantasy. He crafts the World War Two tale about
a squad of Jewish American soldiers who kill Nazis and Shosanna who wants revenge against the Nazis who killed her family
in such a way that only QT could pull it off. Tarantino manages to combine action,
humor, and long conversations into a full assault on the senses. Brad Pitt
sticks out like a sore thumb when impersonating an Italian stuntman, but that is exactly the point. QT wants to make fun of the stereotypes and also make a Spaghetti Western set in World War Two. The three characters that stand out are Shosanna (who ends up owning a small Paris movie theatre),
Bridget Von Hammersmark (a German actress working as a double agent for the British and her time is too brief in the film),
and Colonel Hans Landa (aka the Jew Hunter with a stellar and sometime over-the-top performance by Christoph Waltz).
The two stories start to converge when
Shosanna catches the eye of a German war hero, Fredrick Zoller, and he convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of A
Nation’s Pride (a propaganda film about how Zoller held an entire town against 300 men) at her theatre. Shosanna starts hatching a plan involving the nitrate film to burn all the Nazis alive while watching
the film. Meanwhile, the British and Americans have Operation Kino in progress
as they want to blow up the same movie theatre. Things go wrong and you
end up with quite a movie. No else than Tarantino could use a song from
the Cat People remake to start the beginning of one Chapter of the movie and use Spaghetti Western music for other scenes. When you know who the mad director behind this World War Two film is, INGLOURIOUS
BASTERDS works because no one else could have pulled off a WW2 film like this one.
This movie review is (c)8-21-2009 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission. Send all comments to lord_pragmagtic@hotmail.com
