Inglourious Basterds (2009)

Anyone who has seen some of his previous movies (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, Deathproof) will tell you that Quentin Tarantino is an acquired taste. So distinct is his style of script-writing, direction and editing that it’s impossible not to tell his movies apart from someone else’s. But for the first time – and this is coming from a self-confessed Tarantino fanboy – I think this directorial style has gone against him while making Inglourious Basterds.

The movie is set in World War II and the Inglourious Basterds is a platoon of Jewish American soldiers under the leadership of Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt. Their only job is to land in Nazi-occupied France and kill as many Germans as possible, as gruesomely as possible.

Meanwhile, a Jewish cinema-owner in Paris (played by French actress Melanie Laurent) is going to be screening a huge premiere with all the major heads of the Third Reich showing up for it.

Of course, the Basterds hear of this and decide to blow up the theatre somehow. And so does the cinema-owner herself!

'A 100 Nazi scalps, or die trying!'

Tarantino’s masterful script-writing skills show throughout this movie, with his trademark intricate plots that bring several different threads together to form an explosive situation – it’s almost as good as one of Frederick Forsyth’s novels (but don’t go in expecting a factual history lesson; this is still a Tarantino movie, after all). And really, is there anyone in the whole of Hollywood who writes more memorable characters?

The movie’s title is quite misleading, in a way, as the Basterds themselves aren’t the central point of the film. Pitt, especially, seems like a bad casting choice and the film would have benefitted with a lead actor who was more… ‘American’.

The Basterds do feature in most of the major scenes, but the real stars of the movie are Laurent and the incredible Christoph Waltz, who plays Col. Hans Landa, nicknamed ‘The Jew Hunter’ for his ability to sniff out Jews in hiding. The immediate comparison I can think of to his role is that of Willem Dafoe playing Detective Paul Smecker in The Boondock Saints.

Beneath the exaggerated genius, there is a quiet, understated menace to Landa throughout the movie, unleashed in one final scene. If ever anyone in a Tarantino movie deserved an Oscar, it’s Landa as Best Supporting Actor.

Christopher Waltz as Col. Landa will make
you want to stand up and applaud

The dialogues are vintage Tarantino: drawing analogies to convey the Nazi perspective on Jews; lightening tension-filled environments with the odd quip about genitals; and somehow making the language itself seem more cold-blooded than the person who says it.

At times, the direction does benefit from the Tarantino touch. There are just a handful of people who can pull off conversational scenes as well as he can (Kevin Smith and Thomas Schlamme being the only other names that pop into my mind immediately). I had read an interview by Barry Sonnenfeld, the director of Men In Black, where he talked about how writing long conversations is difficult enough, but directing the same is even more so. Tarantino does it with ease, probably helped by the fact that he writes his own screenplays.

Still, overall, I feel it would have been beneficial to have Tarantino write the script and get someone else to direct it – say Spielberg, Stone or Ridley Scott. There are quite a few scenes in the movie where it seems like the director has a hangover from his last endeavour, the campy Deathproof. His style is intact, it’s just that I do think it does not go well with this script.

Oliver Stone showed how well he could handle Tarantino’s scripts with Natural Born Killers and I can’t help but imagine how amazing Inglourious Basterds would have been under the direction of the guy who gave us Platoon.

But by no means does that mean you shouldn’t watch the movie. Watch it for the script-writing; watch it for the dialogues; and most importantly, watch it for Christopher Waltz delivering a performance that will make you want to stand up and applaud.

Rating: 7/10