INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Wrong Spelling, Right Moviemaking

Not too much to say here, because I loved this film. Jews killing Nazis as brutally as possible? I'm in.

SCALPED SPOILERS BELOW

Basically, INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS is Tarantino's Jewish version of THE DIRTY DOZEN meets Spaghetti Westerns. It's funny, unique, and super-violent. And manages to string together the obvious influences along with a healthy dose of film history love. And for all its quirks, including slapping up a character's name in giant logo and a couple of asides hilariously narrated by Samuel L. Jackson, it pretty much works.

There's no reason why anybody in particular should like a film in which the heroes mash heads with bats, scalp fallen foes, shoot unarmed prisoners, and in which hundreds of people are roasted, shot, and exploded. But you do anyway. Because it's so unusual and so much fun.

The film's strengths are:

Most of the characters are fully dimensionalized, or at least enough for us to like or understand them. Particularly well-rendered are Shoshanna and Col. Landa, the delightful villain. Others, like Stiglitz, you get enough to understand this guy hates Nazi officers and is bound to snap. Brad Pitt's Lt. Col. Aldo Rayne is a bit of an enigma; you know he hates Nazis and is a cruel bastard, but you're not sure entirely why. But Brad Pitt does him with such flair, you don't really card.

Tarantino sure knows how to turn a scene, particularly in assembling all the elements of suspense and then cranking the tension up with everyday dialogue. Whether it's an oncoming basement shootout, Landa interrogating a French dairy farmer hiding Jews under his floor, or Landa and Shoshana sitting in a restaurant eating strudel, these scenes are all super-tense. If and when the violence erupts, it's almost a relief.

And finally, perhaps the film's biggest asset is its uniqueness. For example, when Pitt and crew pose as Italians to inflitrate a Nazi film premiere... Most films would have Pitt and his buddies barely pulling off the masquerade. But Tarantino wisely has them speak atrocious Italian with their horrible accents, and Col. Landa is so aware of it that he laughs hysterically and exposes their plot. It's funny, it's tense, and it's a bold choice that works well.

Plus, you gotta love a film that has Jews killing the shit out of Hitler and the entire Nazi high command.

There is perhaps one minor flaw, but it's an editing decision, not a script problem. Because the film's so long, it seems as if QT cut some of the action for time. So we're treated to Pitt captured, and then he's in a truck with one of his men who wasn't at the premiere. We never find out how BJ Novak got captured or what happened to the rest of the Basterds. But it doesn't really affect anything, because the film's almost over at that point and sailing along delightfully under its own weird steam.