Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is a Second World War adventure about a Jewish-American revenge squad sent into occupied France to reek havoc among the Nazis. Brad Pitt plays their leader, Lt. Aldo Raine, (with an Apache ancestry!) however the honours go to the superb performance by the Austrian actor Christoph Waltz for his brilliant portrayal of SS Colonel Hans Landa. Look out for the Lt. Archie Hicox, the brilliant “British stiff upper lip”, portrayed by Michael Fassbender who magically turns out to be a published film critic. If you’re quick you’ll see Winston Churchill and a cameo with Mike Myers as a senior British officer. The centre of the film is beautifully held together by Melanie Laurent, as a young Jewish woman who owns a cinema in Paris at which the Nazi leadership will meet to attend a screening of a propaganda film. The Basterds plan (Operation Kino) to ambush them at the theatre.  Critics across the board have panned it but they’ve missed the golden nuggets. I say it's a departure from Tarantino into set-piece historical drama. But you have to tune into it right from the very Sergio Leone opening sequence to the multiple-languages-cultures dialogue mix in the film-making. Seen from the so-called mehrsprachiges viewpoint reminds you that Tarantino’s film could turn into an extended Woody Allen or Hal Hartley spiel-on words. Even in the brilliant Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown or even Kill Bill, the characters manage to talk about all sorts of inane subjects whilst the action is clearly in preparation for violence; here in Basterds it’s eloquent, fatuous, pompous Nazis strutting their premature articulation.  As the Cinema is about to be torched there’s an amazing scene with Shosanna dressed in red in front of the Art Deco theatre window with background music from David Bowie's Putting out the fire with Gasoline. The five chapters in Basterds, if followed through attentively, build to a climax of violence and an inspired twist.  You will then be rewarded with an entertaining slant on the apprehension of the intensity of conflict and the horror of war.