Academy Award Nominated Movie Review 4: Inglorious Basterds

"Once Upon A Time in Nazi-Occupied France..." so begins Quentin Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds, a loud, wild, and violent guns a blazin' World War II picture. However, the start of the picture starts out very subtly with dialogue, like many other of Tarantino's films, as the slimy Colonol Hans Landa of the Nazi party and nicknamed "The Jew Hunter" for his ability to hunt down Jewish escapees, convinces a French farmer to reveal the location of a Jewish family he is hiding under the floorboards. Landa then calls in his troops who shoot up the floor and kill all of the family, except the teenage daughter, Shosanna who escapes. Years later, Shoshanna is living under an assumed identity and has inherited a movie theater. This causes a German soldier, who is considered a her by the Nazis, to become smitten by her. Shosanna obviously does not share his love in return but decides to use the soldier when he convinces Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi media head of Germany, to show the propaganda film about the soldier's heroics in Shosanna's theater. Shosanna then jumps at the chance for revenge even further as Hitler and all the heads of the Nazi party will be attendence. Shosanna plots for revenge by blowing up the theater. Meanwhile, the hillbilly-like Liuetenant Aldo Raine recruits eight Jewish soldiers to parachute with him into France and spread fear to the Nazis by killing groups of their soldiers and scalping them. The Nazis in response, unofficially nickname the group, "The Basterds". The Allies soon hear about Hitler attending the screening at Shosanna's theater and give "The Basterds" the chance to end the war. I thought it was quite intriguing of the direction Tarantino went with this film and it was also interesting to see him make this genre of movie. I especially loved the strong dialogue because it gave many the characters smarts and a bit of charm, despite their morbid doings. My favorite characterizations were Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt who gave the character so much wit and humor and gung-ho attitude that it would be fun to follow his character in another movie, and Christoph Waltz as the slimy Hans Landa who you really earn an amount of disgust and hate that you like towards him. While it was fun at that level, at the same time, I felt a growing emptiness in my stomach. By the end of the film, I felt uncomfortable and sad. I think this may because I've seen great World War II films before like Sacing Private Ryan, which honored World War II veterans wel, but parts of Inglorious Basterds felt like they disrespected the veterans a little bit, but that could just be me. That along with the fact that a likable character who the audience spends a certain amount of time with, although not much, is killed off, just lowered the rating for me. Overall, I give this film 2 1/2 stars out of 5.