Inglourious Basterds

I think it’s safe to argue that at this point in his career, Quentin Tarantino is never going to make a PG-13 movie. While other auteurs like Robert Rodriguez, David Fincher and Richard Linklater have made films that are for a more adult audience (Despeardo, Seven, Dazed & Confused), they’ve broadened their filmographies with the occasional family flick (Spy Kids, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, School of Rock). Tarantino will probably never make a movie for kids. He’s comfortable in that R-Rated territory, bordering on NC-17. His movies are full of violence and profanity the likes of which some of us have never seen nor dare witness, and that’s really a good thing. No one wants to live in a world with people like Mr. Blond or Stuntman Mike. The characters Tarantino creates are of his imagination and his imagination alone. While we may like to quote Sam Jackson’s dialogue in Jackie Brown, we’d never want to hang out with him in real life. It may be cool to dress up like Uma Thurman in Kill Bill, but if you saw her in the street, you’d run for the hills. Why? Because these people are effed up!

So it’s with great enthusiasm and excitement that I always look forward to every Tarantino film that comes out. His movies are pure escapism, with stories, characters and dialogue that’s as far removed from reality as possible. Some movies can enlighten you and even educate you, but most of the time, they serve to entertain you. And Inglourious Basterds is here to entertain you.

Set in Nazi-Occupied France during World War II, the film is an assortment of two or three intersecting storylines. It begins with a young Jewish woman named Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) surviving the massacre of her family at the hands of a sadistic, yet extremely polite Nazi, Col. Hans Landa (played by Christoph Waltz). Four years later, Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and a small regiment of Jewish-American soldiers have been dropped into France with the express purpose of killing Nazis, collecting their scalps as they go about their business. Through the help of a German actress working as a British spy they learn that the Nazi high command will be attending the screening of a German film in a small French cinema owned and operated by Shoshanna coincidentally enough, who has plans of her own for the attending Nazis. Their stories all interconnect and lead to a brutal climax that completely ignores history and gives the audience just what it wants.

Like all of his earlier work, the dialog in this film is its greatest strength, only this time it works in creating tension. There’s a great scene in a French bar where a couple of the Basterds and two British spies try to hide their identities from a room full of Nazi soldiers. There’s also a great scene where a Nazi soldier refuses to give information to Lt. Raine, which prompts him to summon the so-called “Jew Bear,” a Jewish soldier known for beating Nazis to death with a baseball bat. As you hear the echo of his bat tapping the walls, you expect some giant beast of a man. It’s… it’s… Eli Roth! the frat-boyish-looking director of the Hostel movies. It’s a nice touch and was completely unexpected.

And while the movie will probably win no Academy Awards for best picture, writer or director, a best supporting actor nomination should, no must, go to Christoph Waltz. He plays Landa as such a charming gentleman, expertly hiding the monster he truly is until his victims least expect it.

I said once before how Tarantino always manages to top himself with each movie. While Basterds may not be his best work, it certainly adds another layer of superior filmmaking under his belt. If we never see a PG movie from him, it'll be for our own benefit.