Tarantino and his Inglourious Basterds

This is a different movie. Yes, different is the word for it. The movie wasn't quite what I expected. I expected a wild WWII movie, something along the lines of The Dirty Dozen and Kelly's Heroes. But this wasn't the case. I don't know why I got these expectations in my mind, although I avoided watching any trailer for this movie (not just for this movie, but for all movies). Perhaps, it’s stuff that got into my head since Michael Madsen was attached to this movie. He would have made one fantastic Basterd… Even better than Brad Pitt.

The movie is great if you want the short version (great and different). This little review may contain spoilers, or what I consider to be spoilers. My spoiler-alert meter is quite different than most of the people I know.

The good stuff:

It’s a Tarantino movie! So, everything from the cool factor, to the music, acting, length, stylish and memorable conversations that would make you feel that the characters are really alive and you have known them for ages, the selection of actors and their performances. Brad Pitt has been better before, but his role as Aldo the Apache is marvelous, but I don’t think it will win him any awards. He was a little stiff. But Chrisopher Waltz as Colonel Landa was amazing. A great villain was added to my all time favourite villains list! Yes, I do have such a list!

The opening of the movie is something to behold. If you are like me and love great opening scenes, and in particular, if you like westerns, and especially, especially, if you liked Once Upon a Time in the West. This is an opening that would have made Sergio Leone proud! And if you watch Chapter Two, you should start thinking about The Wild Bunch.

The Basterds were cool. The intro scene for Hugo Stiglitz should have been for every member of the Basterds. But it wasn’t. I’ll talk more about that in “the bad stuff” part of the review, below.

The bad stuff:

The ending of the movie is unique, it will be a love it or hate it kind of liking. Tarantino tried to do something that wasn’t done before in WWII movies. But the sudden change from reality to fantasy was abrupt. I wasn’t expecting that ending, at all. Really, it came from nowhere. The gritty tone in the rest of the movie made me think of a different ending.

Now, to make the last paragraph more understandable. All movies are works of fiction, even if they were inspired by true events, which this movie claims to be!!! But ending this movie the way it ended, is like ending Braveheart with a bunch of angry Scots that came to storm the castle to save William Wallace. You get what I mean? Braveheart prepared you that Wallace will be executed. And you accepted and expected it.

I wanted to see more and more of the Basterds and their inglourious conquests! After all, the movie is named after them. But this wasn’t the case. Tarantino gave you a taste of sugar in the first two chapters of the movie and promised you for more, but he didn’t give you sugar, at least not in the promised quantity. This doesn’t mean that the later parts of the movie are bad, but it wasn’t what the beginning of it made me think.

Like I said, all the lengthy conversations in this movie were awesome, but I felt that introducing the British Lt. Archie Hicox was a distraction. But the almost 20 minute basement cellar sequence was great and Archie’s performance as a British officer was stunning and was a tribute to all those classic WWII movies. Tarantino could have skipped him and showed us more about the Basterds adventures among the Nazis. You must have seen the baseball bat in posters of the movie. It was only shown and used once… A big missed opportunity...

Speaking about old movies, I would like to see Nation’s Pride! I hope it gets the same treatment as Machete and be turned into a separate movie that is a parody of all the 1940-1950 WWII movies that were made to boost morale.

A great movie, but Tarantino has done better movies. This is not Pulp Fiction or Kill Bill. But it's NOT Death Proof! But he will get some awards for this movie. After all, you know the saying that says, “If you want to get an Oscar, make a film about the Holocaust.”.

Great movie, but I expected too much of it: 4/5.

[Edit 1]: Added some hyperlinks, a score, the baseball bat and fixed some stuff. I visited Youtube and watched 2 trailers for this movie after I wrote the review. Man, I am glad that I haven't seen them before watching the movie itself.