Inglourious Basterds ***** (2009, Brad Pitt, Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger) – Classic Movie Review 3445

Quentin Tarantino worked on his script for this action thriller for a decade, with a working title of Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France that reflects its curious mix of war film and spaghetti western. Lacking a shooting script or a good ending, in 2003 he made Kill Bill instead. Finally filmed in Germany in 2009, it proved to be one of Tarantino’s most successful movies, both critically and at the box office.

Brad Pitt gives an amusingly over-the-top turn as Lt. Aldo Raine, the off-the-wall leader of a bunch of wartime Jewish-American soldiers, out to scalp and kill Nazi scum. But Pitt’s thunder’s totally stolen by Christoph Waltz, in his gloriously chilling and silkily menacing Oscar Best Supporting Actor- and Cannes Best Actor-winning performance as evil Jew-hunter Colonel Hans Landa. You just can’t wait to see him meeting his sticky end – though it turns out you’re going to have a longer than expected wait as the epic-scale movie runs to a hefty 155 minutes.

Then there’s Mélanie Laurent’s fine acting as Shosanna, a young French-Jewish woman who runs a Paris cinema, where the whole ensemble cast, including Martin Wuttke’s Hitler and Sylvester Groth’s Joseph Goebbels, hove up for an extended fiery finale.

Showing off his love of movies to advantage, Tarantino’s stylish film is great disreputable fun for grown-ups – tense, funny, clever and exciting. It needs to be handled with care, because it’s very cynical and gory in places. But, though it might leave you reeling a bit afterwards, this is a highly entertaining mainstream movie – not at all Tarantino in Kill Bill mode.

Among the German contingent, Diane Kruger (as movie star Bridget von Hammersmark), Daniel Brühl (as soldier-star Fredrick Zoller) and Til Schweiger (as Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, one of the Basterds) are all extremely effective. The less said about Mike Myers’s stereotype Brit general the better but, otherwise, this is stonking stuff.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3445

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