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Before I saw this, I wasn't entirely sure of what to expect out of Inglourious Basterds with no official plot synopsis revealed and the filming was pretty rushed (think it was about 3-4 months which isn't that long for a feature film) but the fact it involved Brad Pitt in the leading role and directed and written by Quentin Tarantino, expectations were high. Admittedly, there was no open plot in the trailers so I guess that the plot unveiled itself as the audience watches it (Pulp Fiction was like that as well. Well, it was for me but don't know about anyone else). I absolutely loved it when I watched it and there were flawless moments for me and it was something that was just so cool which isn't naturally normal for a film set during World War II when it is taken seriously.
There is usually lots of violence in war films but Quentin Tarantino uses his own old-school violence like the scalping of the Nazis, a guy getting beaten to death with a baseball bat and carving the Nazi sign onto a person's forehead so in some ways the violence is quite unnecessary but it makes the film even cooler and it suits the director's style. I think the main thing that surprised me about Inglourious Basterds was the fact that there was so much suspense! It is like Tarantino stretched the suspense and then it all exploded and then stopped quite quickly onto either another scene or just carried on and builds the suspense again (such as the opening scene in the dairy farm house and in the bar in Paris).
A group of hardened Nazi killers stalk their prey in Nazi-occupied France as a Jewish cinema owner plots to take down top-ranking SS officers during the official premiere of a high-profile German propaganda film. As far as Lt. Aldo Raine aka "Aldo the Apache" is concerned, the only good Nazi is a dead Nazi. Raine's mission is to strike fear into the heart of Adolf Hitler by brutally murdering as many goose-steppers as possible, or die trying. In order to accomplish that goal, Lt. Raine recruits a ruthless team of cold-blooded killers known as "The Basterds" which includes baseball-bat-wielding Bostonian Sgt. Donny Donowitz aka "The Bear Jew" and steely psychopath Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz among others. When the Basterds' secret rendezvous with turncoat German actress Bridget von Hammersmark goes awry, they learn that the Nazis will be staging the French premiere of "The Nation's Pride," a rousing propaganda film based on the exploits of German hero Fredrick Zoller, at a modest theatre owned by Jewish cinephile Shoshanna Dreyfuss, posing as a Gentile after the brutal murder of her family by the ruthless Col. Hans Landa aka "The Jew Hunter". As the Basterds hatch an explosive plan to take out as many Nazis as possible at the premiere, they remain completely oblivious to the fact that Shoshanna, too, longs to bring the Third Reich to its knees, and that she's willing to sacrifice her beloved theatre in the process.
Brad Pitt already was already in my good books at the time with his amazing performance in The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button but his performance as Lieutenant Aldo Raine was absolutely fantastic! I think he could have possibly been the only actor to have portrayed a character like that. Despite Raine is the leader of the group known as the Basterds, he literally is a bastard towards the Nazis and those around him despite that the Nazis deserved all that they got in this film. Raine does have his moments of slight comedy even though he does sometimes literally mean it like it is something rather serious and his awful act as an Italian with the awful accent was quite funny and how merciless he really is towards pretty much everyone in the German Reich. Christoph Waltz blew me away as Colonel Hans Landa! He proves that he is his own character by receiving lots of awards for his performance including the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award which he rightly deserved and was easily going to win anyway. Landa is quite a penetrating character especially around those insecure characters like Monsieur LaPadite at the beginning, Shosanna/Emmanuelle in the restaurant and Bridget Von Hammersmark at the premiere. It was like he was the main leader of the Nazis more than Hitler was despite Hitler has involved within the film but he is more of a supporting character. Mélanie Laurent did a fantastic job as Shosanna Dreyfuss/Emmanuelle Mimeux. She demonstrates the heartbreak, the courage and bravery and the vengeance of how a Jew must have felt during World War II. She was robbed of an Oscar nomination as was Diane Kruger despite her appearance in Inglourious Basterds wasn't as big as Laurent's appearance was. I liked Mike Myers's cameo appearance and Samuel L. Jackson's narration during the film.
Quentin Tarantino has been planning on filming this ever since 1998 after the release of Jackie Brown. The reason why he didn't film it back then was because the story that he came up with would have been more like a mini-series than a film and came up with a new story after the releases of Kill Bill and Death Proof. I really admire how short the filming of Inglourious Basterds really was and yet how amazingly filmed it was with solid acting and incredible settings. Tarantino goes old school with the violence and the 'cool' script and storylines that are spread out but then start to merge together as the film progresses (Pulp Fiction he did the exact same thing for) but he goes somewhere totally different more than anyone has ever done before. What I mean by this is that he uses the real-life event that was World War II and the war between the Jews and Nazis and visualises it as his own way of ending World War II and because the film was such a huge success, I think that it is absolute genius! It is also like Tarantino's version of revenge from the Jews to the Nazis. I couldn't get over the script. Not only is it one of the best screenplays I have ever listened to and read but I couldn't get over how Quentin managed to write the entire film all by himself. It is a Pulp Fiction kind of style screenplay with its cool, stretching suspense, quite funny and babbling bullshit segments. How The Hurt Locker won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar over Quentin Tarantino and Inglourious Basterds, I have no idea! That is a massive flaw from the Academy.
Overall, Inglourious Basterds is an almost flawless piece of cinema that shows how one individual person can become such an iconic filmmaker and shows Tarantino is a genius once again. To me, this was totally robbed of Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay at the Academy Awards by The Hurt Locker but at least Tarantino and the film itself were nominated. If there is going to be a prequel of Inglourious Basterds whether it is before or after Kill Bill: Vol. 3, I am going to be there at the cinema seeing it on the day it comes out. Tarantino, you legend!
