Review: Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is the new WWII film that writer and director Quentin Tarantino initially started developing about ten years ago. With this film, Tarantino shows that he can work in just about any genre, period and apparently on any scale and still make it his own. The movie is drastically different in scale and scope from his previous films, yet totally familiar to fans of Tarantino’s work. The dialogue is there, the humor is there, the violence, the chapter structure and all of the elements that come with a Quentin Tarantino film. 

The film starts with the words, “Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France”, and with that you are launched in to an daring action packed mix of fact and fiction. Inglourious Basterds tells the story of Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), the survivor of a vicious attack on her family at the hands of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who is better known by his nickname, “the Jew hunter”. 

Next we are introduced to “the basterds”, a group of Jewish soldiers who hunt Nazi's and are led by the half Apache, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt). The Basterds live up to their name by becoming a vicious reflection of the Nazi's own brutality; they come to France for one thing and one thing only, killing Nazis. The German military quickly comes to recognize them by their savagery which includes their take no prisoners policy and the scalping and disfiguring of Nazi soldiers.