The story opens with Colonel Hans Landa (award winning Christoph Waltz) murdering a hidden Jewish family in German occupied France. The teenaged member of the family, Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), manages to escape - probably allowed to do so in order to spread fear of the "Jew Hunter" - and the stage is set.
Three years later we're introduced to Lt. Aldo Raine (Pitt) and his group of Nazi killing Basterds. The Basterds are primarily composed of German Jews from America, returning in retaliation and include "The Bear Jew" (Eli Roth), who likes to dispatch his enemies with a baseball bat and the nefarious ex-Nazi, Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger). Each member of the team has a goal of 100 enemy scalps and the few that they allow to escape, do so with a swastika etched into their head so that no one may forget who they really are. Shoshanna has taken on a new name and new life operating a movie theatre in Paris where she meets heroic Nazi sniper, Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl). She determines to use a Nazi-filled film premier celebrating Zoller's exploits as an opportunity to exact revenge - something that the British and the Basterds are also planning to do with the help of German actress and double agent, Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger).
From the getgo it's obvious why this movie is over two and a half hours long. Tarantino employs a mechanism that many directors seem to have forgotten in the interest of making them easier to sell overseas - dialogue. He not only trusts his audience to follow along with more than pretty pictures, he trusts them to read, as the only non-foreign movie that comes to mind that uses more subtitles is The Passion of the Christ.
The plot is complex, but not complicated. Despite the many characters and sub plots I did not find myself often trying to figure out who was who or what was what. It's meticulously thought out and developed. Brad Pitt may be the star of the trailers, and seeing him try to speak Italian while continuing with his over the top Southern accent is certainly fun, but the real star of show is Waltz. The Austrian actor plays the cold hearted but keenly intelligent killer like no one else could (though Leonardo DiCaprio was originally considered for the role). He flawlessly (as far as I can tell) switches from French to English, to German to Italian without missing a beat or stepping out of character for a moment. That is impressive.
Artistically, this is obviously a Tarantino film, and one of his best. It may be cliche to say, but here is one director not afraid to create what he wants, how he wants it, whether or not it follows with convention. I especially liked his use of non-storyline expository elements when the audience is treated to some piece of information for our benefit alone, like pausing to label a new character in an almost Burn Notice style.
The ending is one of the best I have ever seen and may come as a shock to anyone who does not realize just how far from actual history this story strays. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, but sometimes fiction is so much more satisfying.
***** (5/5 stars)
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