Inglorious Basterds

Movie 🎥 Review: “Inglorious Basterds”. Critics gave it a 69% the users an 88%. Rated: R with a running time of 2 hrs and 33 mins with an IMDb of 8.3/10. Cast: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Til Schweiger and Mélanie Laurent, just to name a few.

It is the first year of Germany's occupation of France. Allied officer Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) assembles a team of Jewish soldiers to commit violent acts of retribution against the Nazis, including the taking of their scalps. He and his men join forces with Bridget von Hammersmark, a German actress and undercover agent, to bring down the leaders of the Third Reich. Their fates converge with theater owner Shosanna Dreyfus, who seeks to avenge the Nazis' execution of her family.

Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 black comedy war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. The film tells an alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's leadership, one planned by Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent), a young French Jewish cinema proprietor and the other by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt). Christoph Waltz co-stars as Hans Landa, an SS colonel tracking down Raine's group and who is connected to Shosanna's past. The film's title was inspired by Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's macaroni combat film The Inglorious Bastards (1978).

Tarantino wrote the script in 1998, but struggled with the ending and chose instead to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007, Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. A co-production of the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget. It premiered on May 20, 2009 at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and received a wide release in theaters in the United States and Europe in August 2009 by The Weinstein Company and Universal Pictures.

The film grossed over $321 million in theaters worldwide, making it Tarantino's highest-grossing film until the release of Django Unchained (2012); it remains his second-highest-grossing film. It received multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay. For his role as Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

Let me remind you right from the get go this is classic a Quentin Tarantino movie. This time a Jewish dirty dozen takes things on their own hands. Tarantino re-writes history and shortens WWII with a comic stroke that is as entertaining as possible considering the violence in this film . A fantasy that re-arranges some controversial historical points. Christoph Waltz opens things up in the most promising way. The opening sequence is filled with a subtle but unbearable tension. Weltz assembles all the Nazi villains we have hated in the movies into one glorious creation. Brad Pitt, rapidly becoming one of the best character actors in the world, with a leading man's face and billing, is truly fantastic. Diane Kruger makes a credible Barbara Bouchet (one of Tarantino's muses from trash action Italian movies from the 70's) and the rest of the cast has some exquisite touches like Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill.

I don't hesitate to recommend this film to all but the over-squeamish. Keep in mind you take your life into you own hands if you choose to watch this. Make sure you watch the trailer above…..LOL