
“Inglourious Basterds” begins in German-occupied France, where Shosanna Dreyfus(Mélanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris, where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish soldiers to engage in targeted acts of retribution. Known to their enemy as “The Basterds,” Raine’s squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of The Third Reich.
This is not my type of movie. Since I had my kids, I haven’t been able to watch any scary or gory movies. I knew going into this movie that I was going to have to close my eyes half the time. Buuut with that said, I knew that I HAD to see this, and see for myself what all the hype was about.
The first scene of the movie, in which a Nazi Colonel interrogates a war-crime suspect had me hooked. I LOVED this movie. Yes there was gore – but not as much as I thought there would be. I did close my eyes during the scalping scenes, but there were only a handful of those anyway.
I thought Inglourious Basterds was genius. I think Quentin Tarantino is genius. This movie was amazing. It’s so wonderfully made, and wonderfully written. It’s pure Quentin Tarantino – in the sense that it moves from dramatic to violent to comical – all in a few minutes. That drove my husband completely mad – but we’ve since determined he may not be a Tarantino fan, like I am.

And let me just say – will someone give Brad Pitt an Oscar already? He (like Johnny Depp) has such a wide range of what he’s capable of, he can play an 80 year old man (Benjamin Button) in on film, and a raving – scalping lunatic in Basterds.
My one complaint is that there wasn’t enough Brad Pitt. He really was only in the movie for probably 30-40 minutes total (out of a whopping 2 1/2 hour long film). But I’ll take what I can get, because he was awesome.
Bottom line: I loved it!! It was gory – but I was able to close my eyes for most of it. It’s not a true story – of what really happened – it’s a complete farce, really. But I like that. I like that in the end the bad guy gets it…even if that’s not how history wrote it.
Two thumbs up for Quentin Tarantino and his brilliant Inglourious Basterds!
Posted Monday, August 24th, 2009 at 10:10am
Filed under
Reviews,
Reviews - Movies |
3 Comments »