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History students need to know that when they Google World War II, "Inglourious Basterds" is a revenge fantasy, a fairy tale that opens with the telltale phrase, "Once upon a time" in Nazi-occupied France.
It even delivers a sadistic twist on Cinderella's slipper along with a memorable villain in a Nazi colonel, Hans Landa (an outstanding Christoph Waltz, see story below).
He can make ordering an execution or a glass of milk a smoothly sinister act, and it's no wonder Waltz took best actor honors at the Cannes Film Festival. He tops the terror of Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth), and Hitler himself (Martin Wuttke), some of the real-life people sprinkled among the fictional fighters.
Directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, "Inglourious" is the anti-"Valkyrie." Most moviegoers realized walking into the suspense thriller, starring Tom Cruise as a German officer, that a plot to kill Adolf Hitler failed.
- Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger.
- Rating: R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality. In English, German, French and Italian with some English subtitles.
- Web site: www.inglouriousbasterds-movie.com/
During the 152-minute "Inglourious Basterds," you're not quite sure who will live, who will die, and who will survive with the mark of Cain -- in this case, an unmistakable swastika carved into the forehead for all the world to see. Forevermore.
"Inglourious," inspired by the conventionally spelled Enzo Castellari 1978 war movie, re-imagines a world where an American named Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a band of brothers. Jewish-American brothers who will, Raine promises, be cruel to the Germans.
Raine, who has a puckered-skin scar around his neck that is never explained, hails from the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and claims some Indian heritage as he orders, "Each and every man under my command owes me 100 Nazi scalps." And, in a few scenes not for the squeamish, he does mean scalps sawed and peeled from the skull with an oversize knife.
Everyone has a plot to take down the Third Reich here, from the avenging Basterds to a woman named Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) who lost her family to the Nazis and a German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) cut from the Marlene Dietrich-Hildegard Knef cloth.
The movie slowly marches to its cataclysmic conclusion that keeps you in suspense about who will survive, who will be sacrificed and who will escape unscathed or scathed. It's overkill in every sense of the word, as if Tarantino decided to turn it up to 11 on the one-to-10 revenge scale.
Tarantino divides his movie into chapters with different titles, tones and music paying tribute to spaghetti westerns, traditional movies about Nazi atrocities or men on a mission, spy subterfuge or explosive action pictures.
Sprinkled throughout are homages to movies, including: a British film critic (Michael Fassbender) with an unusual second act in life; a cinema operator who declares, "I'm French, we respect directors in my country"; a war hero turned movie star (Daniel Bruhl) who is a fictional German variation on Audie Murphy; and appearances or references to Hitler propagandists Goebbels and Leni Riefenstahl along with Oscar-winning actor Emil Jannings.
"Inglourious Basterds" is being sold on Pitt's name, and he is a hoot as a mountain man who wants to strike down or strike fear into Germans, but he doesn't appear until 25 minutes into the movie. This is really an ensemble piece and the only sour note for me was filmmaker Eli Roth as a baseball bat-wielding American soldier who seemed out of place.
Denis Menochet, however, is intensely memorable as a dairy farmer and keep your eyes (and ears) alert for Mike Myers as a general who is almost unrecognizable.
"Inglourious Basterds" is a rich looking, fascinating and imaginative movie that is worth the time and ticket, if only to see Austrian Waltz, now a Londoner with almost 30 years of movie, TV and stage credits. Landa is nicknamed the "Jew Hunter," an awful appellation he wears with pride and cunning.
Tarantino reminds us, in a riveting opening scene, why a revenge fantasy was necessary. The Nazis are evil incarnate, the retribution horrific and the movie deservedly rated R, but it's Tarantino at the top of his game.
