If ever there was a title that instantly linked to Quentin Tarantino, that's it, as it appears scrawled across the screen in 4-foot high bright yellow handwriting that is distinctively his own. He's always had a bit of a OTT hyped following, ever since resevoir dogs and pulp fiction, which admittedly he probably deserves as the majority of his films are pretty damn awesome. But since Pulp Fiction, nothing has quite reached the same level of downright brilliance... Until now.
Opening with a classic 70's Universal Studios globe, and a basic Weinstein company logo, before launching into one of the most basic title card sequences of recent films (Yellow text on a black background), and then dropping you into France, introducing you to a gruff Frenchman and some Nazis, the first chapter starts off on a roll, and from there-on it just keeps on tumbling along under it's own power.
Oddly for the guy with the highest billing, Brad Pitt certainly doesn't have the most screentime, not appearing until the second chapter and again completely vanishing for chapter 3 and only being a minor character in chapter 4. The same applies for the rest of the Basterds too, which leads to the question "How do they get the movie named after them when they're only in half of it and don't appear until 25 mins in?".
The fact is though, it doesn't matter. The chapters without them are possibly some of the best, introducing some great characters and really fleshing out the entire world the movie is set in. Two of the best turns in the film are Mike Myers as General Ed Fenech, ordering the deaths of the third reich, and Christoph Waltz as Standartenführer Hans Landa, the "Jew Hunter", both clearly relishing their roles and playing them with brilliant gusto and slight sarcasm.Along with them are Til Schweiger as Hugo Stiglitz and Mélanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus, both giving brilliant performances, one with very little lines as a German Nazi-Killer, and the other as a vengeful Jewish Girl whose family was killed by Landa. These characters, backed up by storming performances from the cast of Basterds, who manage to pull off being completely and utterly serious, heartless, violent killers, focused entirely on their jobs, whilst mixing in some hilarious set-pieces and lines (Brad Pitt's Tennessee-accented Aldo Raine attempting to pull off an ee-talian accent is pure genious, whilst Eli Roth's Donnie Donnowitz is frankly slightly psychotic, leaping around like an 8-year old and using a baseball bat to beat in the heads of Nazis in one of the most graphically violent scenes this year), result in the whole film gelling together and never losing pace, constantly flicking between various character groups until all their arcs converge on the final set-piece.
What with the film being heavily placed in France, with both French and German characters, there are many sections of the film where the cast of characters on screen is entirely French or German. Rather than rely on English accompanied by stupendous accents, Tarantino goes all the way and puts full conversations on screen in foreign-language, accompanied by subtitles. In sections where the focus is on a French character who doesn't understand German, all German conversation has no subtitles, leaving the audience in the dark as much as the character is. This results in some nice tight spots, accompanied by a roaring soundtrack which really racks the tension up to breaking point, before either blasting it all away or letting it drop slowly.
I don't really want to go too much into the plot and spoil it, as it all jogs along at a good speed, never slowing down or working up too much of a pace and managing holding your interest throughout, but the final barnstorming set piece involving mis-construed plans, explosions, crazed Machine-gun weilding basterds, and a hilarious section involving Lando interviewing Aldo and another basterd brings together everything Tarantino is well-known for, and improves on it. Clearly he's learnt his lesson from Kill Bill 2 and Death Proof, and it certainly shows in this film.
All in all, it's nice to sit in a cinema, and watch a full-scale (almost 3-hour) romp, without having your nervous system assaulted by a barrage of computer generated mess (See Transformers 2, Harry Potter, GI Joe, Wolverine, etc, etc).So what if it's historically inaccurate, instead what you get is an epic, hilarious, brutally violent, interesting, partially foreign-language, occasionally minimalist, and downright enjoyable film, which is what cinema has seriously lacked for a few years.The Closing line of the movie is "This might just be my masterpiece", and you know what? It probably is. Bravo QT, Bravo.
5/5- Tarantino is back on form with his best film in years. A rip-roaring adventure through Nazi-Occupied France, the film flicks constantly between characters, locations and mood, resulting in a continually shifting movie that never loses pace
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