A small bunch (platoon? Ah, group, anyway) of US military is parachuting into Nazi-occupied France in order to kill and scalp as many Nazis as possible and spread fear among the remaining ones. A German soldier falls in love with a French cinema-owner and seeks to convince her of his human nature. A surviving member of a massacred Jewish family lives under a new name and waits for any chance to take revenge. A dealer-and-wheeler Nazi Jew Hunter bathes in the glory of his reputation and interprets his job as a burlesque of vanity.
As usual, Tarantino plot lines are not easy to describe. Does not matter, though, because in Inglorious Basterds, it never gets overtly complicated. The strands of narration start off neatly separated, touch occasionally and converge sometimes. Some characters are disappointingly taking out off the equation too soon (Michael Fassbender’s cutely over-Englishified Lieutenant Hicox, in particular, how sad he had to leave so early) or spend a very short time in the movie after receiveing a grand-style introduction – all the “Basterds”, actually – the film could as well be called “Operation Kino”, as much more time is spent on that plot line. The film projectionists are much more busy than the Brad Pitt killing squad in this film.
Almost no need to repeat the praise for Christph Waltz’s interpretation of the mean and genius Hans Lander, it is the kind of villain that receives audience applause and award recognition. It is the kind of dialogue to learn by heart and use to annoy your friends over dinner with for the next ten years. But most of the other cast also performs very well, excluding maybe the slightly annoying Diane Krueger as German film star Ms von Hammersmark – each time she started talking I could feel her wishing for a tele-prompter, or actually looking at one. Daniel Bruehl is pleasantly well-mindedly slimy, and all the Nazi staff is doing surprisingly well (honourable mention to Ulrich Muehe, one of the greatest living German actors, anyway, quite some Hitler you got us here!).
The intensity and fun of the first half is not permanently maintained through the second. Once it became clear that many lines would converge towards the end, and how that would be, the individual stories lost a bit of their touch.
Throroughly entertaining, though, and definitely worth a second viewing.
thomas4cinema 