Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds

During World War II Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) leads a group of Jewish–American soldiers into Nazi occupied France. Once there, they are instructed to strike fear into the Third Reich, through brutal torture and the scalping of dead Nazis. The Germans refer to this group as “The Basterds”.  Writer/director Quentin Tarantino takes us on yet another violent and dialogue driven adventure during the Great War.

There is not much that Tarantino does that I do not like and Inglourious Basterds is no exception. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen him do a solo film, so it was nice to see some classic Tarantino again. We had different chapters in the film, large amounts of dialogue and some great violence. It’s just Tarantino being Tarantino and I think that’s great.  There are a lot of people that feel that Tarantino does far too much set up in his films and at times I want to agree. In the first chapter there is a long twenty minute plus scene where we meet Colonel Has Landa, or the “Jew Hunter”. The scene takes place on a French dairy farm and Landa is searching for Jewish families. He is speaking with the owner of the farm and you really get the feeling that Landa might be the best there is at what he does.  After the scene was done it seemed a bit long and unnecessary, but by the end I felt that it was pivotal in fleshing out who Landa was. I spoke with others who saw the film and felt the exact opposite and wanted the scene cut from the film. It is just one of those things that I have come to expect from Tarantino as a writer. He wants you to know his main characters. Even if you didn’t get who Landa was at the start of the film I think that not watching that scene at the farm takes a big chunk out of the character we see at the end.

Lt. Aldo Raine and his Basterds are used, surprisingly, sparsely through the film. It’s like we meet them, they go away and then they are back again. We really don’t get too much back story on who they were before the war. You just know that they love doing what they do and that most of them are Jewish. It was a nice touch to see that they had to Germans in their outfit. One had fled Germany for America and the other, Hugo, was an enlisted German soldier that turned on his commanding officers. Hugo killed a bunch of his superiors before being captured. When the Basterds heard about this they just had to have him and broke him out of prison. But as I said they really weren’t in the film as much as you would have expected. Think Jules from Pulp Fiction. He was many peoples favorite character, but he is just peppered through out the story. That is kind of how the Basterds were. To me the story was more about Landa and this French-Jewish girl who had survived encounters with Nazis and was running a small theater in France.

I guess I’m a little bias because I love Tarantino’s work. I mean, the movie is about three hours long and I didn’t even notice. Everyone else I saw the film with was noticeably tired after and I was just pumped. If you’re a fan of his past work you will like this film. If you like watching Nazis get what’s coming to them you will like this film. If you like WWII history and hope to get an on point accurate story well, then maybe you won’t like this as much. I am going to grade this movie two ways a Roman bias Grade and a Fanboyz Grade. Watch the film and let us know which grade is more accurate.

Fanboyz Grade: B-

Roman’s Bias Grade: A