Rating: A
Now before we get into this, I must admit that I am a freak for Tarantino movies. My favorite of his is Pulp Fiction. I love the style in which he directs and the sense of a universe that he creates within all of his movies. It is like he turns his films into an individual member of a family. So if we were to go along with that idea in mind then this film, the latest of Quentin Tarantino's works, would be the old grandfather sitting in a rocking chair on the front porch telling war stories to his children. And the children would be wide-eyed and silent.
Quentin Tarantino rewrites the events of World War II by taking the 1978 film of the same name, directed by Enzo G. Castellari, and places the action in a theater, instead of a train, in Nazi-occupied France, instead of Italy. The film focuses on a rag-tag group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Lieutenant in the army that has vowed to kill every Nazi that he comes across. At the same time that the Basterds are working their way closer and closer to France from where they were dropped in Italy, Shoshanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) has just had her entire family slaughtered by SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who has the appropriate title of Jew Hunter, a Nazi Sherlock Holmes with pipe to boot. Shoshanna is allowed to escape to Paris where she assumes a new identity as an owner of a movie theater. She becomes the desired object of the young Nazi Fredrick Zoller's (Daniel Brühl) affection. This desire leads to Fredrick convincing Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) to show his new film, Nation's Pride, which is about Zoller's actions in battle that has made him a hero to his people. Shoshanna takes advantage of the opportunity to kill a bunch of high ranking officers with great pleasure.
Meanwhile the Basterds have made themselves feared among the Germans with a certain soldier that they affectionately refer to as Sgt. Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth) who kills Nazis by bludgeoning them to death with a baseball bat. Even Hitler himself, played by Martin Wuttke, has come to fear the power that this group has gained. The unit makes its way to a village in France called Nadine where they meet up with the British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) who has a connection with a double agent film actress named Bridget von Hammersmark played by Diane Kruger. Together this group is going to get into the premier of the movie at Shoshanna’s theater but not before plenty of action ensues.
The entire movie is full of the thing that Tarantino loves most, violence. He is even quoted as saying that “violence is one of the most fun things to watch.” When you see this movie that becomes very clear with scenes like The Bear Jew beating the hell out of a Nazi officer’s head or Aldo Raine carving a swastika into the forehead of Hans Landa. This movie is very violent but appropriately so, echoing the horrors of World War II. Obviously, this is not a movie for children both for the fact that it uses the word “fuck” quite often and that it discusses one of the worst events in history.
From a technical standpoint, the movie is very clean in terms of editing and cinematography, which has always been a strong point in Tarantino’s movies. Many shots that are used in this film have been used in his other movies like overheads and shots similar to the trunk shot which is a must have in Tarantino movies. Also, we get a shot of feet. Yes, a shot of feet. For those of you who don’t know, there are two things that you will find in almost every movie by Quentin Tarantino, a shot of a woman’s feet and Samuel L. Jackson, who in this film serves the role of narrator.
Quentin Tarantino is continually growing as a director with every film that he makes and so far, as the last line of the movie states, “this just might be his masterpiece.”
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