Inglourious Basterds**

– Four stars (out of four)

– Rated R for strong graphic violence, language and brief sexuality.

– Who’s going to like it: Tarantino fans, those who like Spaghetti Westerns, those who hate Nazis, people who don’t mind graphic violence, and anyone who’s ever studied film

It’s like Pulp Fiction meets The Good, The Bad and The Ugly set during WWII

Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France, a group of Jewish American soldiers roamed around in civilian clothes hunting Nazi soldiers – collecting their scalps as trophies along the way – in route to a German film’s premiere in Paris where a considerable amount of high-ranking Nazi leaders would be in attendance. Not really, but that’s one of the stories Quentin Tarantino is telling in Inglourious Basterds. The other story is of a young Jewish woman whose family gunned down by Nazi troops right before her eyes. She managed to escape, but now a changed woman with bloody revenge on her mind. By the end of Inglourious Basterds, all parties will meet in what I’m calling the best “pay-off” ending to movie this year.

Even though I view Inglourious Basterds as one of the best films of the 2009, I know that most people wont. You’ll have to see it for yourself. I have a feeling it will be this year’s There Will Be Blood – you’ll either love it or hate it. And here are four factors that I think will divide the audiences:

One – Language. Not as in “foul language” (even though it’s in there), but “actual” language. The majority of the spoken dialogue in Inglourious Basterds is not English. It’s only about 20% English and 80% German, French and Italian. Unless you know this going in, you probably wont be prepared for reading subtitles. Though this is a small factor, I know that for some people it will break the film.

Two – Dialogue. As every Tarantino fan knows, Quentin is a guy who loves his dialogue. Seeing how it is always so natural, smooth-flowing and cool, I’m alright with that. But some people wont be. There are a few scenes in the film that border (if not exceed) twenty minutes of pure dialogue – most of it not pertaining to the plot or story. This will drive some people crazy – maybe even bore them to death. But there’s a reason for it. And that’s the next point.

Three – Slow build to brief explosions of violent action. Tarantino decided to make Inglourious Basterds like a spaghetti-western, following the molds of Once Upon A Time In The West and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Because of that, Inglourious Basterds has a similar structure to those. For example: the opening scene is approximately 20 minutes of talking, a slow build to something huge – and as you watch it, you’ll feel it. The tension of not knowing what’s going on and what’s going to happen becomes so thick that you’ll barely be able to sit there without moving. And then it happens. You realize what the charade has been all about, then there’s a brief moment of strong violence, and the formula starts all over again. That’s the pattern that Inglourious Basterds repeatedly follows for two and a half hours. It’s a dialogue-driven slow build from beginning to end, creating uncomfortably strong moments of tension followed by busts of graphic violence.

Four – A lack of Basterds. The group of Nazi-killing American soldiers is nicknamed The Basterds. Considering that the film is named after them, you’d think it was solely based on them, focusing on their story. But because it’s also telling the story of the Jewish revenge-seeking woman, it’s a shared story. In the first hour of the film, my guess is that The Basterds only have 15 minutes of screen time. They do appear more frequently after that first hour, but people are going to want what’s advertised – a whole lot of ruthless Nazi-scalping Basterds.

There are two things that had better come out of Inglourious Basterds (or I’m not going to be a happy man come awards season): foreign actors Christoph Waltz and Mélanie Laurent had better receive Oscar nominations for their supporting roles. Laurent plays Shosanna Dreyfus, the revenge-seeking Jewish woman and Waltz plays the merciless and menacing, yet always smiling, Nazi Col. Hans Landa (known as the “Jew Hunter”), the man responsible for the slaughtering of Shosanna’s family. Both Laurent and Waltz are two actors that can tell you exactly what they’re feeling without saying a word. Laurent’s eyes speak louder than her voice. Both are absolutely stunning actors that will draw you in and hold your attention each time they’re on the screen.

But we can’t talk acting without mentioning the rest of the fantastic Basterds cast. Brad Pitt plays Lt. Aldo Raine, the desensitized hick leader of The Basterds. Any time he’s on the screen, whether it be from the ignorant words leaving his mouth, his thick and awful Tennessee accent or the blunt honest truths he untactfully spits from his mouth, you’re laughing. If Pitt continues playing characters like his Chad in Burn After Reading and Raine in Basterds, I’ll die a happy man. German actor Til Schweiger plays Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz, a Nazi-hating German soldier court marshaled for killing his leaders. Out of admiration, the Basterds spring him from his cell and make him a member of the team. He is the rock n’ roll of the Basterds. Eli Roth, director of the Hostel films, plays Basterd Sgt. Donny Donowitz (A.K.A. the “Bear Jew”), a blunt force with a baseball bat used to “convince” captured Nazi soldiers to give up valuable information. If he played for the Red Sox, they’d never lose to the Yankees. This is Roth’s best performance yet. Diane Kruger, most known from the National Treasure movies, plays a German actress secretly helping The Basterds to the Paris film premiere. Kruger brings a little class to The Basterds. And Mike Myers (Austin Powers) plays the British assistant to Winston Churchill, General Ed Fenech. Although you might not have guessed Myers to be the best-cast role in Inglourious Basterds, he sure does a fine job in his scene. Hopefully more filmmakers will consider him for other non-conventional roles in the future.

And for the Tarantino fan, yes, he managed to work both Pulp Fiction stars Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel into Inglourious Basterds. Neither appear before the camera, instead they lend their voices. Jackson narrates the voice-over introduction to Stiglitz’s character and Keitel is the over-the-phone voice of Raine’s American commanding officer.

Without trying to make general audiences feel dumb, I truly feel like Inglourious Basterds – much like 2007’s There Will Be Blood – is a film that only those who study or work in the film industry will fully appreciate and enjoy. For those of us who see every movie released, it’s refreshing to see something so creative and wonderfully mastered. Technically speaking, Inglourious Basterds is about 99.9 percent perfect. I just have one small beef: When we’re first introduced to The Basterds, we see all of them, but don’t get to know most of them personally. One of them, played by style=”font-style:italic;”>The Office‘s B.J. Novac, is simply a recognizable face that we only see in the beginning. He doesn’t have any lines or do anything of worth to the plot. We forget he exists. Then, in the end, he magically appears in a place where he shouldn’t be without any explanation – and his character has a name! I’m sure that his reappearance has something to do with deleted scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor. And because he really has no significance to the plot or story, I can dismiss it. I really feel like Tarantino put this movie together and realized it was far too long, so he cut it down to two and a half hours. As for me, just like I’ve been doing with his Kill Bill series, I want more. I want to see the full Basterds. I want to get to know Novac’s character and find out why he is where he is. None of that is pertinent to the movie we now see, so I can dismiss it – but I still want to know.

Supposedly, Tarantino is currently working of the full version of Kill Bill – known as The Whole Bloody Affair. Hopefully, after that, we’ll get Inglouriously Extinded Basterds.

Photo credit: The Weinstein Company

** Note: Both of the words in the title “Inglourious Basterds” were intentionally misspelled. Rumors range from Tarantino accidentally misspelling them, to intentionally misspelling them to avoid a problem with the MPAA’s acceptance of the title. Tarantino refuses to give an explanation why.