INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Movie Review (10/10)
From its perfect opening to its incredibly satisfying ending, Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds grabs of a hold of the viewer and drags them through a different type of war film. Devoid of action but filled with masterfully crafted battle of words, each of the film’s 5 chapters tell an engaging tale that come together to form on of my all time favourite films.
Inglourious Basterds follows three groups of people: The Basterds led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) and Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent) in France as a plot of assassinate Hitler unfolds before them.
As mentioned before, Basterd’s perfect opener takes Hitchcock’s bomb analogy to heart and creates a masterpiece of suspense. With its meticulous writing, simple camera movement and an Oscar worthy performance by Christoph Waltz, you truly understand the dread felt by the poor French farmer as Hans Landa slowly puts all the pieces in place and whispers, “Checkmate”. Every single time I finish watching that scene I feel myself let out a huge sigh of relief because I had forgotten how to breathe for the last 20 minutes. Two more such scenes come to mind: The restaurant scene and the basement meeting. All three of these scenes show Tarantino flexing his writing muscles to squeeze out every bit of tension that he possibly can without breaking any scene.
This film mostly takes place indoors with a few exceptions and the cinematography does its best to make us feel that. The tight sets and up-close camera perfectly portray the claustrophobia felt by each character in every scene as they are confronted by someone they must overcome. When needed the camera is swooping, covering the entire room, and when the characters have their hearts in their hands, it is personal and brings the audience in. Tarantino has truly mastered the art of conversation, on all fronts, an aspect of his that is highlighted further with The Hateful Eight
While the movie is suspenseful when it needs to, it also contains many bits of comedy that work well to punctuate the serious moments. Brad Pitt delivers a charmibng performance as Aldo, and there aren’t enough words in my vocabulary to express my love for the work Christoph Waltz does as Landa. To act, masterfully so, in four different languages is a feat few can lay claim to.
In the end, Inglourious Basterds is expertly crafted work from a master who understands his medium and takes full advantage of his writing and direction to create a dialogue filled adventure that achieves the thrills that most action films don’t even come close too.
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