Review of Inglourious Basterds (2009) by Arghyadip D — 28 Feb 2016

Successfully sidestepping the atrocities of WWII, Tarintino's focused direction and carefully orchestrated vision ups the ante with the controversial and stomach turning Inglorious Basters. The almost completely fabricated and twisted yarn is a fanciful comical tale of sweet revenge that's partly historical, partly the product of Tarintino's own fertile, sharp and somewhat morally devoid imagination.

Triggered by a rather enjoyable and correctly spelt 1978's B-Movie, determined to outdo his previous achievements, Tarintino liberally douses his surprising music cues with mesmerising punchy and rhythmic dialogue. The snappy hybrid with approximately 70% subtitles unsettling shifts in tone and pace, flow of anxiety and gradual swelling of excruciating tension leads to umpteen memorable moments intent on conjuring response.

In keeping with Tarantino's instantly recognisable stylised brand of splatter fare, the otherwise jagged, lengthy and gruesome WWII spaghetti western yarn is broken into five tautly-edited acts.

Act one opens with "Once upon a time... In Nazi occupied France". In 1941, Colonel Hans Landa AKA "the Jew Hunter" (Christoph Waltz) of the Waffen-SS enters the home and proceeds to interrogate provincial French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet). Under suspicion of giving refuge to a local Jewish Family the charming and seemingly reasonable Landa utilises his multilingual abilities as a homing devise to cunningly extract that the fugitives are hidden under the floorboards. His verbal tiptoeing leads straight into the masochistic carnage of all residents expect for Shoshanna, the famers daughter whom escapes.

Jump to three years later, Half-bread Tennessee hick Lieutenant Aldo Raine aka Aldo the Apache assembles a motley crew of Hebrew-heritage American GI's. Their mission is to accompany him behind enemy-lines to send a message of terror to the German powers through Aldo's personal peculiar sadistic style of torcher including a requirement of 100 scalped Nazi's. The lethal unit known only as a mist reputation by the Nazi's of the Third Reich as "the basterds" take particular pleasure in beating Nazi's to death with a baseball bat and carving the swastika into the forehead of their victims.

Shoshanna, the 1941 massacre soul survivor has assumed the identity of "Emmanuelle Mimieux" and is now the proprietor of a Parisian cinema. Unwittingly sparking the interest of spotlight-hungry sniper-turned-actor Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) Shoshanna is bribed into hosting the premier of his new uplifting Nazi propaganda film Stolz der Nation (A Nation's Pride), a celebrated retelling of Zoller's battle exploits.

The exclusive premier becomes a ground zero target for both party's murderous plots when all leading Nazi's agree to attend, including Goebbels, Bormann, Goering and even the high strung Fuher himself.

Aldo hatch's a plan to infiltrate the theatre's premier and cut the head of the Third Reich's power bring about the end of war, Whilst Shoshanna plans to exact revenge with the help of her resistance contacts and projectionist boyfriend Marcel (Jacky Ido) by setting light to her highly flammable film stock and burning her own theatre. However, will the methodical investigations of Colonel Hans foil both plans?

What differentiates Inglourious Basterds from Tarintino's previous works is its sheer playfulness. Tarantino does digress, as is his wont, but his irritating indulgences are less pandered making way for this thought-provoking concoction to spew its venom.

Tarintino's casting is once again flawless to a fault. The magnificently sculpted script is intensified by sublime performances throughout. However unusual, alleged villain Austrian-born Christoph Waltz's elegantly seamless language gymnastics and beautifully measured exquisitely sadistic style stealing the light, even Brad Pitt's fun but highly underrated comical moustache twitching, folk-wisdom-spouting and cringe worthy twangy Southern drawl is not match.

The Verdict: The highly publicised and supposedly gratuitous gore to which Tarintino fans have become accustomed is simply not shocking. Perhaps not for the faint of heart the Mexican standoff of talent, story and comedy emanates vindicating its half-mocking and morally reprehensible historical lust for war.

Published: The Queanbeyan Age.

Date of Publication: 04/09/2009.