Inglourious Basterds – Review

I don’t know any blue-blooded American that doesn’t like fantasizing about killing some Nazis. They’re cinema’s greatest villain, all a film maker has to do, is say their villain is a Nazi and it’s instant heat. As long as there has been sound in film, there has been war films, notably WWII films. Killing Nazis is good and all, but you got to throw in some of that good old American fist-pumping heroics, and a student of that is Quentin Tarantino. He has been in this mode of popularizing old genres recently, taking niche genres and mainstreaming them. Shaw Brothers kung-fu flicks from China is Kill Bill, and open road car films from the ’70s is Death Proof. Except the latter was his weakest film, one that feels hastily put together, as it features some of his blandest characters and lamest dialogue scenes.

Tarantino is a student of cinema, and that is perfectly clear in his films, but Death Proof was on-the-nose with its influences, to standout of all the copycats who are going back to the wild west of cinema known as the 1970s, and it felt bland and desperate. Has the pop culture master fallen off? Every director has their off film, but he returns valiantly with this ever so loose remake of Enzo Castellari’s exploitation WWII film from 1978, Inglorious Bastards. Where as that film was a cheap (but fun) Italian knock-off of the Dirty Dozen, Tarantino just makes good on killing Nazis, and it’s apparent that killing Nazis is a good business venture.

Tarantino succeeds here with his crafty staging of scenes. From the first chapter (a repeated gimmick from Kill Bill), he handles a scene where Col. Hans Landa (a criminally good Christoph Waltz) interrogates a French man hiding runaway Jewish people. Col. Hans Landa is cunning. Tarantino writes the scene almost as a violent type of foreplay. He uses his well-written dialogue for when Col. Hans is telling the French man about the nature of rats and squirrels. Why are we compelled to instantly attack a rat when it enters our home, and not a squirrel? They’re both rodents. These exchange masterfully explains why the Germans are eradicating the Jews. As if we needed more fuel for our Nazi-hating fire, Tarantino gives us a craftier reason to hate the Nazis even more. He uses his camera movements to give us a non-verbal cat-and-mouse game, following the rise of suspense to its inevitable conclusion. This early scene not only establishes Col. Hans as a genius that can sniff out liars, but sets the stage for the continuous use of the slow building of suspense to rally up our hip-hip-hooray American pride to its natural climax. He’ll do this numerous times, and its always gratifying.

As much as killing Nazis is fun (a tag line that is always worth repeating), he does stumble midway through. The film begins to meander for a time, albeit somewhat interestingly, but he starts to love each character, no matter how minute, giving them long-winded scenes. Inglourious Basterds is like a Stephen King novel, it starts off with promise and draws you in, then putts around for a time, almost boringly. Although with the promise of the early parts, you continue to follow, even though you want to have him get on with it, wherever he’s going with it. Then when he reaches his story’s climax, everything fits together, and you see his full scope and arc, you’ll appreciate the time he meandered around. But it still feels long-winded. Same thing here. There’s a hugely unneeded scene with Mike Myers (yes, Austin Powers himself), that feels, well, like a deleted scene from Austin Powers in Goldmember. It’s too jokey and out-of-place.

But Tarantino hasn’t forgotten his early promise, and he ends the film with the ultimate climax, however fictionalized it is, history is just too anti-climatic for us Americans. He doesn’t go full on with his genre love.  Here he’s just flirting with Nazisploitation. He’s more impressive with his use of Nazi chic than SS women torturing prisoners. It’s loud, hollow, fun, and a welcome return for cinema’s so-called prodigal son. It’s Kill Bill, but less epic. A fun realization of American expectations brought to a satisfying conclusion, as satisfying as an American apple pie. Now, who says some WWII-Nazi killing, has to be as stiff as a college level history class? Kill some Nazis, and collect their scalps!

Rating:

For another review of Inglourious Basterds, click here for Serena Whitney’s take.