Inglorious Basterds

MOVIE TITLE: Inglorious Basterds

DIRECTOR: Quentin Tarantino

YEAR: 2009

GENRE: War Movie

RATING: R for violence, language, and sexual content

GRADE: Mixed

With all the political tension in today’s world, who wouldn’t want to escape into a world of Nazi-slaying fun? Cutting off their scalps, beating them with a bat, shooting them up, burning them down, if there’s a way to kill a Nazi in World War II, Aldo Raine and his troops will make it happen. You know who else will make it happen? A lone Jewish woman named Shosanna whose family was slaughtered by the Nazi war machine. That’s a lot of vengeful desires from anybody not involved in the Third Reich. There’s no possible way that this movie could be anything but perfect, right? Well, that’s where Quentin Tarantino’s biggest fault comes into play: sometimes his movies drag on for an excruciatingly long time. Inglorious Basterds was no exception to that rule. I realize a movie can’t be all action and no drama, but the reverse is also true if the idea is to make a revenge flick: it can’t be all drama and too little action. Some of the chapters could have been cut short and it wouldn’t have hurt the movie in any way, especially the chapter where the Nazis play the card game at a bar. If you want your bloodthirsty fun, you’ll have to get in line like everyone else.

But when you get exactly what you wanted out of this film, it’ll be exactly as you expected. The outcome of the story was never in doubt for even a second. Aldo Raine and his troops are overpowered in spite of the fact that some of them get killed along the way. Shosanna’s own plans for revenge are so brilliant that detailed that no German soldier could possibly crack her code. Everything that could go right in this movie did go right…except for the element of surprise for the audience. I guess when the genre is described as a “revenge flick”, it doesn’t leave much to the imagination. No serious detective work has to be done. But can I at least believe for one small minute that the good guys have a chance of losing? Having a few of their soldiers killed vulnerability does not make. I want to see some flaws. I want to see some cracks in the world’s most impressive plot armor. Maybe if the German propaganda machine took these kinds of notes, their films wouldn’t look so ridiculous on screen.

If you think this review is going to be a nonstop bash-fest, you’re wrong. It was enjoyable for what it was. Quentin Tarantino’s dialogue will always deliver no matter what the genre of his movies. The subterfuge his characters engage in is also an impressive feat that required an extraordinary amount of creativity. Above all else, however, I must give my highest praise to the character work of Hans Lander, the Nazi colonel nicknamed the “Jew Hunter”. No, I’m not condoning his belief system, just his villainy. Whenever he interrogates someone, he knows he’s got his victims by the throat. He purposefully tiptoes around the answers he receives to give his liars a false sense of hope. I’d call this a perfect game of cat and mouse…if the cat had drill bits for fangs, battleaxes for claws, and venom for drool. I’d dare say that Hans is even more intimidating and dangerous than his boss Hitler himself. He’s so believable as a villain that he can almost negate my earlier point of the outcome being too predicable. Key word being almost.

It wouldn’t be fair to call Inglorious Basterds my least favorite Quentin Tarantino movie, because all in all I did enjoy it. Having a least favorite Tarantino movie is like having a least favorite flavor of ice cream: in the end, it’s still ice cream and it’s still going to be more delicious than the creamy strudel Shosanna and Landers shared in the high scale restaurant. This movie gets a mixed grade from me, but it’ll be a high mixed, which means three-and-a-half stars out of five. In the interest of being decisive and honest, I’ll round it down to a solid three. Being average doesn’t have to be a bad thing, right?