INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Quentin Tarantino could have spelled the title of his latest blockbuster using ancient hieroglyphics, and “Inglourious Basterds” still would have been exactly what it is: a magnificent movie.

Brad Pitt stars at Lt. Aldo Raine, the Southern-fried, smart-alecky leader of a group of heavily-armed, vengeance-seeking Jews who dart from place to place during World War II ridding Europe of Nazis. They ambush them on lonely country roads, capture a few here and there and try to scare them into revealing German military secrets, and usually, in the end–as per Raine’s directive–kill them and scalp them, adding the tops of their skulls to their wartime memorabilia “collection”. (Sound horrifying? Wait till you see it.) Those they allow to go free–and we see them release a couple of prisoners over the course of the movie–they “brand” as Nazis forever, so that everyone who looks at them will know instantly who they were and what they stood for, even when they’re out of uniform. (Be prepared: the “branding” scenes are equally as cringe-inducing.)

Believe it or not (despite the fact that they make Jack Bauer from TV’s “24″ look like Mother Teresa) Pitt and his crew of angry, bloodthirsty “basterds” are the good guys. After them there are the bad guys (handsome young enlistees from the Nazi rank-and-file), and the REALLY bad guys (Hitler, Goebbels etc.). Then there’s the complicated plot, which revolves around a Parisian movie house called upon to premiere a tasty bit of Nazi propaganda that Goebbels is convinced will put the German film industry on the map. Everyone will be there, including the Fuhrer himself, and before you can say KA-BOOM! plans are set in motion to blow the joint up with the Nazi high command trapped inside. (Two plans, actually, with neither side aware of what the other is doing.) The ending of the film–when the dynamite hits the fan, so to speak–is pure, jaw-dropping spectacle.

Pitt is very good: funny, charming, yet as dangerous as they come and always–always–all business; Austrian newcomer Christoph Waltz is brilliant as the oily SS Jew-hunter Colonel Hans Landa; and French actress Melanie Laurent is breathtakingly beautiful and heartbreakingly real as Shosanna, the proprietor of the theatre, a woman with as deep a grudge against France’s Nazi oppressors (and Landa himself) as anyone. (In nearly every scene, her large, expressive eyes are the eyes of a trapped and wounded animal, which, for most of the film, she is.)

But the real star of the movie is Tarantino himself. As the director, he allows every scene to unfold
at its own pace; nothing is rushed. Characters are permitted to talk to each other, probe each other, until the suspense has built to such a crescendo that you can hardly bear to watch them, anymore. The camera circles this way, and that; it gives us low-angle shots and high-angle shots; it zooms in for intense close-ups, and pulls out again; and occasionally, during one of the film’s heart-stopping pauses, it simply draws back and watches. The result: one of the most tension-filled films of the year.

Of course, because it’s a Tarantino film, there’s also the usual helping of gore, gunplay, and Mexican stand-offs. And, yes–occasionally, you might find yourself cringing and chuckling at the same time; there’s comedy amid the carnage, too.

Bottom line: go see “Inglourious Basterds”. It might just be the best picture of the year.

FILM REVIEWS by Stuart R. Brynien