Inglourious Basterds :: Rogerebert.Com :: Reviews 31/08/09 9:11 PM

Inglourious Basterds :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews 31/08/09 9:11 PM

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related articles Eli Roth and Brad Pitt are "Inglourious Basterds."

Quentin Tarantino glouriously Inglourious Basterds basterdizes World War Two » / / / August 19, 2009

by Roger Ebert

times & tickets Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious cast & credits Basterds” is a big, bold, audacious war Fandango movie that will annoy some, startle Lt. Aldo Raine Brad Pitt Search movie others and demonstrate once again that Shosanna Melanie Laurent showtimes and buy he’s the real thing, a director of quixotic Col. Hans Landa Christoph Waltz tickets. delights. For starters (and at this late Sgt. Donny Donowitz Eli Roth stage after the premiere in May at Lt. Archie Hicox Michael about us Cannes, I don’t believe I’m spoiling Fassbender anything), he provides World War II with Bridget von Hammersmark Diane a much-needed alternative ending. For About the site » Kruger once the basterds get what’s coming to Fredrick Zoller Daniel Bruhl them. Site FAQs » Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz Til Schweiger Contact us » From the title, ripped off from a 1978 B- Cpl. Wilhelm Wicki Gedeon movie, to the Western sound of the Burkhard Email the Movie Marcel Jacky Ido http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090819/REVIEWS/908199995 Page 1 of 3 Inglourious Basterds :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews 31/08/09 9:11 PM

Email the Movie Ennio Morricone opening music to the Marcel Jacky Ido Answer Man » key location, a movie theater, the film Pfc. Smithson Utivich B.J. Novak embeds Tarantino’s love of the movies. Pfc. Omar Ulmer Omar Doom The deep, rich colors of 35mm film Major Hellstrom August Diehl on sale now provide tactile pleasure. A character at Perrier Lapadite Denis Menochet the beginning and end, not seen in Joseph Goebbels Sylvester Groth between, brings the story full circle. The Hitler Martin Wuttke “basterds” themselves, savage fighters General Ed Fenech Mike Myers dropped behind Nazi lines, are an Francesca Mondino Julie Dreyfus unmistakable nod to the Dirty Dozen. Sgt. Rachtman Richard Samuel And above all, there are three iconic Master Sgt. Wilhelm/Pola Negri characters, drawn broadly and with love: Alexander Fehling the Hero, the Nazi and the Girl. These Winston Churchill Rod Taylor three, played by Brad Pitt, Christoph Buy now » Waltz and Melanie Laurent, are seen The Weinstein Company presents a with that Tarantino knack of taking a film written and directed by character and making it a Character, Quentin Tarantino. Running time: definitive, larger than life, approaching 152 minutes. MPAA rating: R for satire in its intensity but not — quite — strong graphic violence, language going that far. Let’s say they feel bigger and brief sexuality. than most of the people we meet in movies. Printer-friendly » E-mail this to a friend » The story begins in Nazi-occupied Buy now » France, early in the war, when the cruel, droll Nazi Col. Hans Landa (Waltz) arrives at an isolated dairy farm where he believes the farmer (Denis Menochet) is hiding Jews. He’s right, and a young woman named Shosanna (Melanie Laurent) flees into the woods. It is for this scene, and his performance throughout the movie, that Christoph Waltz deserves an Oscar nomination to go with his best actor award from Cannes. He creates a character unlike any Nazi — indeed, anyone at all — I’ve seen in a movie: evil, sardonic, ironic, mannered, absurd.

The Hero is Brad Pitt, as Lt. Aldo Raine, Buy now » leader of the Basterds. Tarantino probably wants us to hear “Aldo Ray,” star of countless war films and B pictures. Raine is played by Pitt as a broad caricature of a hard-talking Southern boy who wants each of his men to bring him 100 Nazi scalps. For years, his band improbably survives in France and massacres Nazis, and can turn out in formal eveningwear at a moment’s notice. Christoph Waltz in "Inglourious Buy now » Pitt’s version of Italian is worthy of a Marx Basterds." brother. (Enlarge Image) The Girl is Shosanna, played by Laurent as a curvy siren with red lipstick and, at the film’s end, a slinky red dress. Tarantino photographs her with the absorption of a fetishist, with closeups of shoes, lips, a facial veil and details of body and dress. You can’t tell me he hasn’t seen the work of the Scottish artist Jack Vettriano, and his noir paintings of the cigarette-smoking ladies in red.

Shosanna calculatingly flirts with Buy now» Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a Nazi war hero and now movie star; he persuades Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of his new war film in her theater. This sets up a plot that includes Tarantino breaking several rules in order to provide documentary footage about how flammable nitrate film prints are.

A Tarantino film resists categorization. Buy now» “Inglourious Basterds” is no more about war than “Pulp Fiction” is about — what

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090819/REVIEWS/908199995 Page 2 of 3 Inglourious Basterds :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews 31/08/09 9:11 PM

the hell is it about? Of course nothing in One of Jack Vettriano's noir the movie is possible, except that it’s so women in red. bloody entertaining. His actors don’t chew (Collection of Roger and Chaz Ebert) the scenery, but they lick it. He’s a master at bringing performances as far as they (Enlarge Image) can go toward iconographic exaggeration.

After I saw “Inglourious Basterds” at Cannes, although I was writing a daily blog, I Buy now» resisted giving an immediate opinion about it. I knew Tarantino had made a considerable film, but I wanted it to settle, and to see it again. I’m glad I did. Like a lot of real movies, you relish it more the next time. Immediately after “Pulp Fiction” played at Cannes, QT asked me what I thought. “It’s either the best film of the year or the worst film,” I said. I hardly knew what the hell had happened to me. The answer was: the best film. Tarantino films have a way of growing on you. It’s not enough to see them once.

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