MOVIE REVIEW: INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS

Six of Seven Cows

With Inglorious Basterds director Quentin Tarantino has hit paydirt in a big way. Though not for the faint of heart, Tarantino’s newest is a spectacular return to form that will have fans of his best work – Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, the Kill Bill series – dancing in the aisles like the mad thrill freaks they are.

            

What has always set Tarantino apart from other film-makers is his pure, unbridled love of film and his complete disregard for the rules. He is a fan of movies, and it shows. That might seem like an odd statement – surely all filmmakers are fans of film, right? Perhaps, but that’s not always evident. Tarantino, on the other hand, writes and directs with a sense of joy that can only come from a true fan of the medium. Even at his worst it’s always apparent that he’s having fun, his greatest flaw being a propensity for self-indulgence. Self-indulgent though it may be, Inglorious Basterds is far from his worst, probably ranking as one of his three or four best movies.

             

Brad Pitt leads and excellent but otherwise mostly-unknown cast, playing an American officer leading an irregular band of Jewish-American soldiers in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Pitt is a good choice, as he can act with the same sense of joyful abandon with which Tarantino directs. German actor Christoph Waltz is excellent as the cunning but pathological SS Colonel Hans Landa, and like Pitt and Tarantino seems to be enjoying himself. Melanie Laurent is good as Shosanna Dreyfus, a Jewish cinema owner seeking revenge for the murder of her family.

             

Tarantino’s trademark  wit is on full display in the dialog, and his afficianado’s ear is evident in the soundtrack, though with this being a period piece the soundtrack is less hipster-cool than most of his movies. Still, it’s obvious as always that Tarantino is as much a fan of music as film.

             

Inglorious Basterds is violent and not for the kiddies, and at two-and-a-half hours it’s not for those with short attention spans. It’s hard to imagine anyone becoming bored, despite it’ length, but I guess it’s conceivable the over-stimulated might become fidgety. Unlike many of Oliver Stone’s movies, Inglorious Basterds makes no pretense of being a history lesson, which is part of the fun. Tarantino makes no effort to color inside the lines, and his World War II is only very loosely related to reality. I give Inglorious Basterds six baseball-bat wielding, blood-spattered cows.