Inglourious Basterds

Last year, I went to see Appaloosa with my friend and brother and we saw a trailer about a WW2 group of people, and I immediately got excited. I had read things about Quentin Tarantino’s newest film Inglourious Basterds, but I had no idea when it was coming out, who was in it, what it was going to be about, stuff like that, all I knew was something about WW2. So I sat in my theater seat and got excited. I saw Daniel Craig cross the screen and my blood boiled in excitement. The trailer finally got to the end, and the title crossed the screen…Deception. My heart sank like a rock.

Months later and an actual Inglourious Basterds trailer crossed the big screen and my excitement rose again. I’m not a huge Brad Pitt fan, apart from the classics such as Fight Club, Se7en, and even Ocean’s 11. But it was Quentin Tarantino, and I’ve trusted him since Pulp Fiction.

I unfortunately wasn’t able to see it in theaters, even though that was one of the things I looked forward to the most of 2009, but that’s okay, I actually have yet to see a Tarantino film in theaters apart from Grindhouse.

I waited for the DVD to come out for a couple months and was quite relieved when I saw that it was coming out in mid-December. Simple enough to say, I was the first in line (not literally) to get my hands on Tarantino’s latest masterpiece.

Well, I had already watched Inglourious Basterds once, but I didn’t see the harm in watching it again for my review.

Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France. Just the opening and the name of the first chapter got me excited. It opened to a small farm in France and a Nazi general who is known as ‘The Jew Hunter’ goes to inspect a Jewish family farm. He interrogates the father and discovers that he is harboring another Jewish family under his floorboards. They then proceed to kill the hidden family except for a young girl who escapes.

We then get out first introduction of ‘The Basterds’. They are small troop consisting of about ten people, and they have one job, and one job only…killing Nazi’s and giving their Sergeant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) their scalps, and he wants their scalps.

So ‘The Basterds’ are told that there is going to be a movie premiere about a Nazi troop who fought off several American troops and is a hero to the Nazi party. So Adolf Hitler himself wants to honor the soldier by being at the premiere himself.

The plot is basically just that, ‘The Basterds’ trying to set up their plans to get to Hitler, the theater owner (who was the woman who escaped at the beginning) planning an assassination attempt on them as well to get revenge for her slaughtered family, and a young actress who is a double agent for ‘The Basterds’.

The editing was well done, it was hilarious at several points, and it was dark at others. It was everything you could expect from Quentin Tarantino. It wasn’t his best movie, I think Pulp Fiction still holds that title, but I would rank it up there with Kill Bill. If you love Tarantino, you will love this movie. If you don’t, it’s still worth a watch.

Definitely one of my favorites of 2009, and I would love to see it go up for Best Picture. I give it 9 out of 10.