His Take/Her Take: Inglourious Basterds

Worth the price of admission, or a waste of time? Brian McKechnie and Suzanne Ellis offer you their take on the latest movies hitting screens. Read their reviews every week, exclusively on CityNews.ca.

Let Brian and Suzanne know what you think of His Take/Her Take via email at brian.mckechnie@citynews.ca or suzanne.ellis@citynews.ca .

INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS

Rated R
Cast: Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Christoph Waltz, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent
Directed by: Quentin Tarantino
Official Site IMDB

Set in France during WWII, a group of Jewish-American soldiers known as “The Basterds” make it their mission to hunt down the Nazis.

Brian’s Take

**** out of 5 stars

Quentin Tarantino is one of those filmmakers that can do no wrong in my eyes. I get his vision and I like what he presents on screen (even his worst is tolerable). When I saw Pulp Fiction for the first time in 1994 it affected me so much I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker and went to school for it. Inglourious Basterds might not have that same effect but it is one of Tarantino’s best and one I could watch a hundred times without ever getting bored.

The film is set during World War II in Nazi-occupied France. A group of American-Jewish soldiers led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) is sent in undercover to hunt and kill the Nazis. SS member Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is assigned to track them down and kill them. Needless to say this is a complete work of fiction that only Tarantino could dream up.

The epic-sized cast is amazing. All the roles have been written for the actors specifically and even a role as small as Mike Myers, who is on-screen for a total of five minutes playing General Ed Fenech, was crafted for him.  As the ruthless leader of the pack Pitt is wonderful but it’s Waltz’s Col. Hans Landa that steals the movie. His performance has Oscar written all over it. Eli Roth does a decent job as Sgt. Donny Donowitz and Martin Wuttke is a very realistic-looking Hitler.

Without a part for his go-to girl Uma Thurman we’re introduced to some fresh actresses in the Tarantino world. Mélanie Laurent, who plays Shosanna Dreyfus, a movie theatre owner who is secretly a Jew, and Diane Kruger, who portrays fictional actress Bridget von Hammersmark. They are both beautiful, strong female leads and Tarantino never makes them appear weak or in need of a man to save them.

Like Pulp Fiction, Kill Bill and Reservoir Dogs there are a ton of great scenes, not to mention strong dialogue, in Inglourious Basterds. The opening of the film, where Col. Hans Landa pays a visit to a French farmer who may or may not be hiding Jews, pulled me in and kept me on the edge of my seat. Same with a very intense scene in an underground bar. For a movie that’s close to three hours long it flew by because of these memorable moments.

Since seeing it, the one question I keep getting asked is where does it fall in my list of Tarantino-helmed films. Pulp Fiction is still my favourite of the bunch with Kill Bill (Vol. 1 & 2 collectively) in the second spot. Inglourious Basterds is a close third now and I could see it moving up after repeat viewings (the rest of the list would be, in order; Reservoir Dogs, Grindhouse, his segment in Four Rooms and Jackie Brown).

There are so many more things I could mention about the film but my words would never do it justice. If you’re a fan of Tarantino’s, go see it for yourself, and I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Suzanne’s Take

**** out of 5 stars

A dairy farmer hacks away at a tree stump in the French countryside while his daughter hangs sheets from a clothesline – in the distance, several cars approach along a dusty gravel road.

Um, wait — this is a Quentin Tarantino picture, isn’t it?

Yes it is, but Inglourious Basterds is full of surprises.

That pastoral setting, not what you’d expect from the Pulp Fiction auteur, provides the backdrop for one of the most gripping opening film sequences in recent memory. The farmer, Perrier LaPadite (Denis Menochet) is suspected of hiding Jews on his property in Nazi-occupied France and SS Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), charged with rounding up the remaining Jewish people on Hitler’s orders, is there to find out if the rumours are true. A tense exchange between the two men follows, pleasant on the surface but fraught with dread. We sense what Landa, nicknamed The Jew Hunter, and his fellow officers are capable of, but what will they do?

Thus begins Tarantino’s WWII film, which plays fast and loose with history to brilliant effect.

The trailers and posters would have you believe that Basterds is a Dirty Dozen-esque Brad Pitt vehicle about Jewish Nazi hunters, but that’s only one side of the story.

That said, let’s stay with Pitt for a moment – once again, he succeeds when he’s not trying to be the lead but an interesting character in an ensemble cast – his Lt. Aldo Raine is a grizzled military man with a penchant for the gruesome. He orders his conscripts to scalp their Nazi kills and admires his own bloody handiwork.

It’s an amusing, well-acted performance that in another film might be a standout, but here that honour is bestowed on Waltz, who is by turns frightening, charming, hilarious, and loathsome as Landa. The Austrian-born thespian rules the screen every time we see him – a knockout performance that already earned him the best actor award at Cannes, and should net him an armload more. An Oscar nomination seems a sure bet, and he may even be the first actor in a Tarantino film to win.

Right up there with Waltz is the remarkable Mélanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus. The owner of a small cinema in Paris, Shoshanna has unwittingly attracted the eye of German war hero Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who wants the film based on his exploits to play at her movie house. She’s no fan of his, or his German counterparts, but his unwavering affections mean she’s soon shaking hands with the likes of Landa, who she encountered earlier in the war, and Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth). A terrifically suspenseful scene involves Shoshanna and Landa eating strudel in a Paris restaurant — it’s incredibly well-acted by both Laurent and Waltz.

That’s not to take away from the rest of the talented cast, an embarrassment of riches for Tarantino, which includes Diane Kruger as German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, working as a spy for the Allied forces, Michael Fassbender as British Lt. Archie Hicox, and the aforementioned Bruhl.

Hicox and von Hammersmark are players in the film’s key intrigue, Operation Kino, which involves essentially chopping the head off of the Third Reich. To say much more about it would only spoil the experience, so let it just be said that the climax is vintage Tarantino – funny, violent, and outrageous.

Music has always played an important role in Tarantino’s films – and I imagine that what Reservoir Dogs did for Stealer’s Wheel’s Stuck In The Middle With You and Pulp Fiction did for Urge Overkill’s version of Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon, Inglourious Basterds will do for David Bowie’s Cat People (Putting Out The Fire). The little-known Bowie track, which played during the closing credits of the cheesy 1982 horror flick Cat People, is gloriously resurrected here.

Those little touches are what set Tarantino apart from other filmmakers, and with Inglourious Basterds he proves he’s still a cinematic force to be reckoned with. Just when you think you’ve got him figured out, he throws you something wholly different, but just as satisfying.

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Top image: Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine. Courtesy Alliance Films.

Middle image: Mélanie Laurent as Shoshanna Dreyfus. Courtesy Alliance Films.