My Review: Inglourious Basterds (10/10)

(10/10) Inglourious Basterds is by far the best movie of the year. Quentin Tarantino once again directs a masterpiece; a film that combines a lot of violence, funny and inteligent dialogues, and great characters. I`m a huge Tarantino fan and have enjoyed all his movies. It`s very hard to pick a favorite since all his movies are great: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill, and now Inglourious Basterds. Tarantino is a master at what he does and he knows everything there is to know about films, and in this movie which you would expect to be all about World War II he combines so much film history knowledge into it that the war actually seems to take a second place. No other director can tell a story the way he does and combine so many diferent characters that you actually care for and hate seeing them get killed off. I had huge expectations for this movie and I wasn`t disappointed. Tarantino seems to combine the same formula he uses for all of his movies mixing funny dialogues with violent sequences, but he has a way of telling each story that just ends up captivating you every time.

The opening sequence was just brilliant and it actually set the tone for the rest of the movie since the film seemed to focus on long dialogues (which explains why the movie is two and a half hours long) that contributed on building the tension and anxiety of the viewer. In this opening scene we are introduced to Col. Hans Landa (played brilliantly by Christoph Waltz) who has a long conversation with Perriere (Denis Menochet), a family man who has a milk farm and is hiding jews. Col. Hans is trying to find out if Perriere is hiding jews and we are introduced to his character in this dialogue where he explains his position, his occupation, his nickname, and so on. Everything we need to know about him, we learn through the conversation that these two characters have. In the meantime, we the viewers begin to feel the anxiety that this Colonel is putting us through. Col. Hans doesn`t just storm in and turn the place upside down in search of the jews, instead he loves torturing his adversary and has long conversations with them prooving his intelligence and superiority. Christoph Waltz creates one of the best villains (I would rank him up there with Ledger`s Joker and Hopskins`s Hannibal Lecter) and surely will get an Oscar nomination for his work in this movie where he switches back in forth from german to french to english to italian. In this opening sequence he proves his talent by being able to soften Perriere and making him talk despite seeming to be uncorruptable at first. His character does this several times during the movie and enjoys torturing his victim`s psychologically. After Perriere gives away the hiding spot of the jews, one girl escapes, Shosanna (played by Melanie Laurent) and she will become a key character later on in the film when she finds an opportunity for revenge. In the second chapter of the movie we are introduced to the basterds. They are a group of about a dozen American Jews who are in France with the sole purpose of torturing and killing Nazis. Their leader is Lt. Aldo Raine (who is also played extremely well by Brad Pitt and his character is probably the one that delivers most laughs). Some of the basterds include: Donny Donowitz, the bear jew (played by Eli Roth, the director of the Hostel films) who kills nazis with a baseball bat, Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Scweiger), Lt. Archie Holcox (Micheal Fassbender), and Wilhelm Wicki (Gedeon Burkhard) among others. Some of these characters share a key scene with Bridget von Hammersmark (played by Diane Kruger) in a tavern where they plan on ambushing the nazis in a theater. Diane Kruger also delivers a great performance as Bridget, a famous movie actress that is actually a spy against the nazis. The performances by Christoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, and Melanie Laurent were all outstanding and there were a few other characters that played smaller roles that were also great. The perfomances combined with Tarantino`s script add to the overall suspense and tension of the film.

This movie introduces so many different characters that I wish they all had a chance to have more screen time. Brad Pitt is not in this movie all that much as the trailers made you think, but it all worked out for the best becuase every character brought something different to the table. The language switching from german to english to french and then to italian all contributed to give this film a more realistic touch. I loved the diversity and complexity all these factors brought into play. The film isn`t actually as violent as you would expect it to be. It does have some of the classic Tarantino elements of over the top and suprise violence, but there is much more to it. The way the story is told and put together is what I enjoyed the most along with how Tarantino builds the suspense and tension. All these elements contribute to make this a complete film. It is hard to say if this is his best work because I have come to love all his other movies, but this films feels more mature and maybe Tarantino feels the same way about it. He even might have subconsciously said it through Lt Aldo when he told his partner at the end of the movie: I think this might just be my masterpiece. His masterpiece or not this is still a great movie and the best I`ve seen all year.