Tarantino Shows Brilliant Side Again

Tarantino worked on the script for the film, which takes its title from the, correctly spelled, The Inglorious Bastards (1978) by the Italian director Enzo G. Castellari, for a decade before finally bringing it to the screen. In spite of the borrowed title, the film is not a remake, and it may contain fewer obscure references than the other films by Tarantino, who acquired an encyclopedic knowledge of the art during his years as a video store clerk. The story is linear, more or less, unlike in other Tarantino films, and although a good three-fourths of the 153-minute work is a bit slow, it is very far from boring.

 

The "basterds" in the film are a group of Jewish American soldiers who plan an attack on the Nazi leadership in occupied France. They also operate as a force of terror, taking the scalps of dead Nazi soldiers, but allowing a single soldier to survive each attack to tell others, though with a Swastika carved into his forehead.

 

The film is divided, of course, into episodes, five in all. And when a climax is not reached in the fourth episode, the anticipation builds for one in the fifth. But that doesn't come either. Rather the film ends in its own, unforgettable way.

 

The characters appear to have been chiseled from a decades-old script. But they are better. Brad Pitt's character, Aldo Raine, is still exciting after two and half hours. Christoph Waltz, who plays Hans Landa, the Nazi turncoat, draws more from his character than could ever be expected. Film-goers will find genuine characters in the roles placed by Diane Kruger, Mélanie Laurent and Til Schweiger too.

 

Author: Bálint Kovács