Inglourious Basterds

As relentlessly audacious and engrossing as anything within Quentin Tarantino’s flawless body of work, Inglourious Basterds follows a series of characters through their WWII-era exploits – with a particular emphasis placed on a blood-thirsty group of Jewish-American soldiers (led by Brad Pitt’s Aldo Raine) and a young woman (Melanie Laurent’s Shosanna Dreyfus) with a serious grudge against the Nazis. It’s not surprising to note that the film boasts an emphasis on dialogue that pervades its every aspect, as writer/director Tarantino – hardly encumbered by the historical setting – floods the proceedings with the mesmerizing chatter and laid-back pace with which he’s become known for. Tarantino’s decision to pepper Inglourious Basterds with a number of eyebrow-raising touches – ie the tongue-in-cheek introduction of Til Schweiger’s Hugo Stiglitz (complete with narration from Samuel L. Jackson) – quickly ensures that the film has little in common with its thematically-similar brethren, although it’s just as clear that the disjointed narrative and relaxed atmosphere prevent certain sequences from faring as well as others. This is particularly true of a mid-movie stretch set inside a German bar that follows famed actress Bridget von Hammersmarck (Diane Kruger) as she attempts to pass a pair of Allied soldiers off as Nazis, with the curiously uneventful nature of the scene essentially bringing the proceedings to a dead stop (as another critic has already noted, the interlude “feels like a 20 minute island unto itself in the middle of the flick.”) It’s a minor misstep for what is otherwise a consistently enthralling endeavor that’s been jam-packed with jaw-dropping images and sequences, with the captivating efforts of a uniformly impressive cast effectively elevating the movie on an all-too-regular basis (and as easy as it would be to single out Brad Pitt and Eli Roth for their respectively stunning performances, it’s lesser known folks like Laurent, Daniel Bruhl, and especially Christoph Waltz who establish themselves as the film’s MVPs). There’s subsequently little doubt that Inglourious Basterds‘ incredible (and appreciatively violent) finale instantly cements its place as an engrossing, thoroughly innovative spin on the war-movie genre, with Tarantino’s almost aggressively irreverent sensibilities likely to win the film as many detractors as admirers.

***1/2 out of ****