Killing Nazis for Sport

I desperately wanted to love Inglourious Basterds. After all, this was the latest film from Quentin Tarantino and his films tend to be the kinds of films I love. With Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill volumes 1 and 2, Tarantino pretty much desensitized me to different kinds of violence. So when I heard that Tarantino was going to do a World War II film that had Brad Pitt and other actors killing Nazis, I was already looking for the line to the ticket gate. Unfortunately for me, Inglourious Basterds didn’t quite live up to my expectations.

In Nazi-occupied France, the famed “Jew Hunter” Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) has the Jewish Dreyfus family killed except for the escaped Shosanna. Over in Italy, American 1^st Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of Jewish-Americans and Germans to cause havoc within Germany by scalping Nazi soldiers and carving swastikas on the the foreheads of survivors. Popularly known as “The Basterds”, even Hitler himself takes notice. Four years after her family’s murder, Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent) now goes by the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and operates a small Paris cinema. When the German sniper Frederick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) shows interest in movies and her, Shosanna is forced to screen the premiere of a film made by Nazi propaganda head Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) about Zoller’s exploits for the Nazi elite. Shosanna plans to burn down her cinema to kill all the Nazis altogether. At the same time, Raine and his Basterds are also plotting the assassination of the German brass with the help of British Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) and German film star/spy Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) resulting in a bloody standoff in the basement of a French pub.

Basterds is typical Tarentino in the sense that a. there are a lot of scenes where characters just seem to be talking, b. there’s a lot of graphic violence, and c. the film is an homage to a film genre of the past. I’m not saying the long dialogue is a bad thing at all, in fact, it’s one of the Tarantino trademarks that I love. The dialogue helps the audience understand where the characters are coming from, their motivation, as well as why they’re doing the things they do, and Tarantino has made a habit of writing rich dialogue for his characters. The first scene in particular shows just how evil and twisted Standartenführer Landa truly is. Waltz’s performance here stands out so strongly and he really feels like a suave yet demonic Nazi of the highest order. He combines charm, class, and hatred of Jews to go beyond the stereotypical Nazi of old and his brutality later in the film shows even more of his acting range.

As a Tarantino film, it’s best to keep in mind that Inglourious Basterds wasn’t meant to be historically accurate. I mean, there’s no record of anybody scalping Nazis during World War II and the ending of the film obviously didn’t happen. Despite the great cast, good plot, and the gory details, there was still something a bit off about the film for me. I think the pacing was a bit too slow when compared to other Tarantino favorites like Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill. I realize the need for explanation and establishing how things are what they are, but I believe Tarantino could have done away with a few minutes here and there to speed up the pace. After all, in a film like this, we as audience members just want to get to the next killing scene already.

I did like the fact though that both Shosanna’s plan and the Basterds’ plot never overlapped and only intersected during the film’s climax. In that way, there was no need for any awkward introductions between characters and the focus stayed on both plans trying to come to fruition. In my humble opinion, Inglourious Basterds was still a good film to catch, just not as good as previous Tarantino efforts on the big screen.