Inglourious Basterds [Blu-ray] [2009] [Region Free]

Obviously this isn't an accurate portrayal of events taking place during WW2 nor is it intended to be, so if that is important to you then of course you will not enjoy this film. Tarantino rewrites some major aspects of that so be prepared. But some aspects of a German occupied France are realized incredibly well I think with great, terrifying realism - starting with the brilliant and incredibly tense opening scene of the 'Jew Hunter' (played fantastically by Waltz) inspecting a French dairy farmer's home in an attempt to discover an unaccounted-for Jewish family. Yes, a member of the German intelligence agency carrying out this role would be unlikely given that the Germans assigned such roles to French collaborators, but the experience of such a situation is what's captured so horribly wonderfully. The tension is unbearable and I think scenes like this in the film represent some of Tarantino's best directional work at the more subtle end of his often very violent offerings. It's a theme that runs well throughout the film - the fear and tension of being uncovered - and often this is partly created by relatively slow-paced scenes to help build the tension, but for me the film never drags or seems unnecessarily long because of it. It helps to represent the desperate desire for an uncomfortable situation to end as quickly as possible.Beyond the expected violence, for me this film overall has a different feel and tone to it from Tarantino's other classics and I think this works well, but the film like many from Tarantino is split into chapters, with three main story arcs coming together through them with Waltz essentially being the link that ties them all together. Often in these three main stories the actors are speaking in German, French or Italian (Waltz manages all three with perfection) with subtitles and I think this also works very well given the setting and their roles and especially where a lot of the time these languages are being spoken by non-nationals trying to impersonate the opposite and not be discovered for it.And all of the actors with the exception of Pitt, who for me was sometimes a little too punchy and camping it up just slightly too much (this isn't Planet Terror, Brad!) were incredible in this film and are a big part of making it so watchable . Waltz really is incredible in his role, as was Fassbender in his role as a British spy and Kruger especially also really stood out for me in this film. It was impossible not to wonder if her role as a German actress double-agent who collaborates with the French was inspired by Marlene Dietrich and she plays the role perfectly.Tying a lot of this together is (not surprisingly given it is Tarantino and a wartime setting) some very graphic and gory violence. One scene in particular with a baseball bat was pretty uncomfortable but at other times , such as one or two of the shoot-outs, the violence seems pulp-like and comedic such as you would find in other Tarantino films, which would be my only minor criticism really. It is indeed a long film as the 2 and a half hours or so aren't filled with non-stop action sequences or endless special effects and it is indeed a violent film, and one which is fantasy/fictitious and not historically accurate - so if any of those things are likely to bother you then you probably wont enjoy it much!

Quentin Tarantino has never been a man to let reality get in the way of telling a good story. For all its coolness and hip dialogue, even his justly celebrated Pulp Fiction has a sense of unreality about, I mean, no one really talks like that, no one. And with his latest, Tarantino has taken this sense of unreality to a whole new level.When we first enter Tarantino's new reality, we are quickly informed that this is occupied France, once upon a time. A young Jewish girl Soshanna Dreyfus witnesses the execution of her family at the hands of SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), but she manages to escape. Fast forward a few years and Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is organising a group of Jewish soldiers to operate behind enemy lines, striking terror into the heart of the Nazi war machine. Nicknamed "the Basterds" by their foes, Raine's men rapidly become a unit to be feared, and is chosen by the high command to take part in a top secret operation. "The Basterds" join German actress and undercover agent Bridgit Von Hammersmarck on a mission to destroy the German high command. Their job is to blow up a cinema in Paris where the Nazi elite are attending a movie premiere of Goebbels latest piece of propaganda. However, the owner of the cinema is the now adult Soshanna (Melanie Laurent) and she has her own plans for revenge.With its preposterous plot and World War 2 setting, you may be expecting a no holds barred action movie, but instead what you get is a movie that is very hard to categorise, and that is only to its credit. Constantly subverting the viewer's expectations, the film is by turns dramatic, violent, action packed and wickedly funny, often all of them in very quick succession, but the one thing it is not is a war film, Tarantino merely uses the setting to tell his tale.And what a tale it is, so utterly over the top it takes a while to realise that it's a joke, but once you do get the point that this is all about the director thumbing his nose at convention, it becomes so much more. With a number of scenes played utterly straight for dramatic tension, in particular the opening interrogation sequence and the following brutally casual execution of the fugitive family, and certain scenes of atrocious violence played for laughs (witness the torture sequence of German prisoners by "The Basterds") it takes a while to get a handle on the film, but Tarantino has littered the film with clues (the opening title sequence, the use of incidental music in a less than incidental fashion, one of the characters in the film being a film critic), and once you get the joke, it becomes very very funny, in that darkly comedic style of Fight Club, where you find yourself laughing in the face of adversity.And not only is it funny and at times so verbally dextrous it is almost impossible to keep up, it is also littered with superb performance, both comedic and dramatic. Brad Pitt gave a hint of his genuine comedic talents in fight Club and later in Burn After Reading, but here he really hits his stride, delivering an at times rousingly funny performance as the larger than life Aldo Raine. Smaller performances of no less appeal litter the film, including Michael Fassbender putting his best stiff upper lip forward as Archie Hicox, Eli Roth as the baseball bat wielding lunatic Donny Donowitz, the Bronson like brilliance of Til Schwieger as Stiglitz (who gets an outrageously brilliant introduction within the film) and Daniel Bruhl as Private Fredrick Zoller, a hero of the Nazi regime and the subject of the film within a film. But if the film belongs to anyone, it is a straight out fight between Melanie Laurent as Soshanna and Christoph Waltz as Hans Landa. Soshanna is a superb creation, frighteningly believable in both her tougher and tender moments, surviving as a tribute to her deceased family whilst at the same time burning with a desire for revenge that eventually extinguishes her desire for self preservation. But rivalling Laurents performance is Waltz as Landa, a sophisticated sadist with a genuine love of his work, even though that work is hunting down and destroying the enemies of the Nazi regime. By turns mannered and menacing, he is an intelligent, quick witted man who is always doing what is best for himself at any given time, and in the hands of Waltz he is a murderer who comes for you with a smile on his face.The film is very funny as I have said before, but that's not to say that bad things don't happen, often to good people, but that's the nature of the tale that Tarantino is telling, after all this is war, albeit Tarantino's highly stylised war. Don't watch this film expecting anything approaching historical accuracy, but watch it instead as Tarantino intended it to be viewed, with your tongue firmly in your cheek.

Typical Tarrantino

Much criticism has been heaped upon this strange offering from Tarantino. But I would say that it's a great yarn; with nods to The Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Sergio Leone and those tense WW2 thrillers of the 1950s, this is a Jewish Revenge Story on a grandoise scale. Brad Pitt, part-Apache (another oppressed race) leads a motley crew of dedicated Nazi killers whose mission is to strike terror into German troops. Their calling card is to be the ritual scalping of their victims. Next up they are ordered to kill big-wig Nazis at a Paris film premiere. Alongside this story-line, a Jewish girl is owner of a tiny Parisian cinema. Her family were murdered several years earlier by a particularly evil SS officer played magnificently by Oscar-winning Christoph Waltz. He reminds one of Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List but even more scary if that is inhumanly possible. He'll be at the film premiere too, of course. Just then the plot gets even more preposterous when Goebbels decides to show this latest propaganda blockbuster to all the top Nazis, including Hitler, at the little Paris cinema. So now we have two assassination plots being hatched at once, both unknown to each other. This all ends in perhaps the most violent and highly symbolic massacre of Nazis ever staged on screen. I won't go into detail but watch the piece and enjoy the (cinematic) carnage as hundreds of evil fascist scumbags get theirs and remember, it's only a film. By the way, the film that is being watched by Hitler and friends is also an extra feature on the DVD and is hilarious.