Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds

It's 3 am and I can't sleep. I can't get Inglorious Basterds and every bloody detail of it out of my head. It should be enough to say that Inglorious Basterds is glorious in almost every way. But there's so much more that needs to be said about this Quentin Tarantino flick.

The film is a dark comic fantasy (and so it begins "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France" and like a fairy tale, it is told in chapters.) about a gestapo unit of the Allied forces, led by Lt. Aldo Rein (Brad Pitt) terrorizing and killing the Nazis, including its very leader, Adolf Hitler.

This film will grab you by the balls and make you squirm and fidget in your seat from the first scene to the last.

Tarantino is an expert at creating atmosphere, especially tensed, suspenseful sequences that make you feel as though you were walking through an empty street and the air suddenly changes around you and you know you're being watched but you don't see anyone else, and you fear for your life, then you run. It felt exactly like that in the theater tonight, except that we couldn't run, we were stuck in our seats.

Nothing extraordinary is happening onscreen, nothing apparent atleast, yet you can feel the characters' tension, you can hear their heart beat, you can hear yours. In the first chapter, Col. Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) pays a farmer and his 3 daughters a visit. Hans is cordial to a fault, he chats with the farmer, drinks the farmer's cow's milk, smokes a pipe. He asks several questions. This goes on for quite some time. We want to believe that Hans is kind and friendly, but we know better. We see the eyes of the daughters darting nervously towards each other. The silence is palpable. We can taste their fear. In fact, even before we realize it, it has become ours. We know that something is up. And it goes on some more, Landa drinks his milk, the farmer answers questions and it is torturous, it's like waiting for an unseen storm. In the next few minutes, a family has been massacred.

And the massacre is a scene from the Sound of Music compared to what follows - scalps are removed, testicles are shot, necks are broken, blood is everywhere. This is after all a movie about the Nazis and one made by the creator of Kill Bill. In one scene we see hundreds of Germans watching a film about a Nazi war hero killing hundreds of Jews and Allied soldiers. The Germans laugh, applaud and some even cry. Soon, the German-filled theater is burning to the ground. The Nazis burn to death, some of them are shot and the audience, including me, is laughing, applauding and I wouldn't be surprised if someone shed a tear or two. Here, the human capacity for violence is both glorified and questioned.

The film, albeit a fantasy of sorts, is insightful in the portrayal of Nazis. Murderers, this is what most of us in this generation know about the Nazis. In the film we see that like the very Jews they have killed, like the Americans and the English, and like us, the Nazis were also human, which makes them all the more fascinating.

The actors give pretty decent performances. Brad Pitt seems to be having fun playing the dedicated, Nazi-hunter with the Southern accent. But no one can argue that this is Christopher Waltz's movie. Here, he delivers a character who is charming, elegant, cunning and frightening. He lures us with his gaze, with his laughter, with his kind words, with his wit and his brilliance. Then he jumps a woman and strangles her to death. Every time Landa steps into the screen, my palms become clammy and a scream wants to come out of me and I want to hide under the seat.

Overall, Inglourious is exciting, funny and smart. It asks us a lot of questions without being overzealous.

I give this movie an A.

Go watch it now!