Review: Inglorious Basterds

I saw Inglorious Basterds a few years ago and I remember liking it - I can still remember a lot of scenes from it - but I only saw it the once and I didn’t know how much I liked it. Well seeing as I’m going through Tarantino’s back catalogue I saw an opportunity to check it out. And while a very good film with some very good moments, it does have a couple of issues.

For starters the story, it’s a good story and it uses the theme of vengeance really well, the problem is it sort of meanders around a bit during the first half, we have about four different stories all wandering around aimlessly until they come together. Now this isn’t the first time Tarantino has uses several plot threads, hell that’s the entirety of Pulp Fiction but where there each story was self-contained, here they are all interlocking with each other and it gets a little too much to handle at first since you’re not really sure who to follow. But, I digress.

We follow three groups of Allied forces, the French, the Americans and the Brits as they fight the war against the Nazis. On the French side is a young woman called Shosanna - under the guise of Emmanuelle - wants revenge on the Nazi for the death of her parents and plans to use the German Film Festival at her cinema as an opportunity. On the Brits side is a film critic turned lieutenant, Archie Hicox, who works with German Actress and double agent, Bridget Von Hammersmark on an operation to bring down the Third Reich, also during the Film Festival. And on the Yank side is the titular Basterds who spend their time spreading fear and scalping Nazis for fun.

Despite being the title of the film, the Basterds are not only not the main stars, they are never referred to as such. That’s not to say they aren’t important it’s just that we don’t spend as much time with them as you expect and to be honest, for a group of eight soldiers only half of them have any line of dialogue. There’s Hugo Stiglitz, a German born soldier who defected to America and became a legend in his own brutal right, there’s Eli Roth as Donny Donowitz, the Bear Jew who wields a baseball bat, now I’ll admit Donny was pretty bad-ass until he opened his mouth, I don’t know if that’s Roth’s real accent but it sounded ridiculous.

The Basterds were led by Lt. Aldo ‘The Apache’ Raine, played by Brad Pitt. Raine flat out hates Nazis and uses the Apache technique of ambushing and scalping to spread the fear of him and his Basterds throughout the Third Reich. I don’t know if it was Tarantino’s intention but Raine could be seen as quite hypocritical, he claims to hate the brutality of the Germans and the way they treat others but the brutal way he encourages his men to treat the prisoners could be seen as just as bad.

The British side don’t make as big of an appearance as you’d think but they are important to the story. Michael Fassbender plays Hicox, the Brit posing as the Kraut and spends a good chunk of his time trying to convince and SS Officer that he is genuine. The actress Bridget - Diane Kruger - stays in a little longer but her well laid plans are brought down by having to play her hand earlier than expected.

You could make a compelling argument that Shosanna is actually the main character of the film and I’d agree with that, it’s her mission for revenge that is one of the driving plots of the film, she’s a brilliant character and played incredibly well by Melanie Laurent. Losing her family to the hands of the Nazis three years earlier, Shosanna escaped and hid in a French cinema where she catches the eye of German War Hero Fredrick Zoller who convinces Hitler to host the premiere of a movie based on his life at her cinema. Seeing this as an opportunity for vengeance, she puts into motion a plan to kill the heads of the Nazi party, willing to lose everything she has for revenge. She’s a very soft spoken character, never showing fear until she’s alone and even then her anger takes over most of the time.

And finally we have Christoph Waltz in his Oscar winning performance as Hans Landa, The Jew Hunter. What makes Landa so great is that he’s so good at his job, you can always tell he knows a little bit more than he’s letting on and he uses his power and his reputation to scare you into revelling what he already knows. It’s never revelled what goes on in Landa’s head, you don’t know if he likes his job, you don’t know how he operates and that makes him all the more terrifying, he’s ruthless, betraying anyone so he can come out on top, even his more humorous moments have that underlying sense of dread about them.

Tarantino does a great job as director, however I think he’s also one of the major problems I had with the film. First of all this is easily his most ambitious picture, it’s a historic piece with several interlocking stories and characters, but I think at times it feels too big, there’s a lot going on and it’s difficult for us to keep up with, at times it feels difficult for Tarantino to keep up. There are a few scenes that drag on a little, even with Tarantino’s dialogue flair I think the large use of German and French means that something is lost in the translation. Normally these scenes do end up as something more, a Nazi restaurant scene ends with a tense moment where Shosanna is face-to-face with Landa, the man who killed her family, the then there’s the infamous pub scene which starts simple but slowly turns into a much more tense and exciting beast, but then there are a few scenes which don’t really go anywhere. Of course like I said the film does find it’s footing and the last act is a blast to watch, the combination of Shosanna’s revenge, the Basterd’s plan and Landa’s betrayal makes for a brilliant scene and an amazing ending to the film.

It’s worth note that the film does include a lot of references to film itself, since the Nazi’s were using propaganda film it feels right to use the references but at times it feels a little much. Like having Joseph Goebelles direct a film about a German Hero and host it in a French cinema is one thing, but then you have Hicox’s two books on German cinema, references to Italian cinema as part of the Basterd’s disguise, I get that Tarantino is homaging them but tone it down a little.

Overall though, Inglorious Basterds is a very good film, it has some problems with how big it is and the story drags for the first half but the second is a lot better and the characters are incredible. There’s even a great soundtrack I forgot too mention - which includes a surprisingly good use of David Bowie’s Cat People. I recommend this one, not Tarantino’s master piece but still, damn good stuff.

8.5/10