Movie Review: Inglourious Basterds

A really amazing retelling of Second World War history, Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds turned out to be a long yet tight, riveting, and, of course, Oscar-nominated and -winning movie.

Tarantino's combined filmmaking strengths, which are many, come primarily, in my opinion, from his writing and character development. I'm pretty convinced that Brad Pitt rather enjoys the roles he's offered and chooses, from Snatch to the Ocean's franchise to Basterds, Pitt often plays well the more colorful, and slightly offbeat characters, and his Aldo Raine is as quirky and fun as either Mickey or Rusty. Christoph Waltz's character, Colonel Landa, moves so fluidly linguistically and terroristically, to make his portrayal chilling. Watching Waltz win the Oscar on television a few weeks back, with the short Basterds excerpts, didn't really provide any insight into how analytical and ruthless Landa was, which only served to make the twisted ending, however grotesque it was, all that satisfying.

Tarantino's Basterds is far from the typical Charles Bronson or early Clint Eastwood vigilante movies, where the heroes are avenging victimized family members, or cleaning the streets and battling their supervisors as much as the criminals. Basterds proves to be the ultimate revenge picture, where the audience finds the protagonist avenging an entire race, culture, religion.