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Saturday, December 19, 2009

Just saw Inglorious Basterds... for the 10th fucking time!

... and as such, you can now consider me an official IB junkie.

But seriously though, the film is just awesome. Awesome to the nth power multiplied to whatta-fuckin'-real number and you got IB.

First off, the film isn't really something of a history lesson, so any other history freak like me ought to expect nothing less than sheer Tarantino-drenched fantasy based on a true event.

The movie takes place "Once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France" and portrays a ragtag group of American Jewish soldiers behind enemy lines and wreaking havoc within the German army. It stars Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo "the Apache" Raine as the would be leader of the group. With his thick southern accent and his razor sharp knife, he scalps away at every last Nazi in the film ( I might be exaggerating here). Their mission is to basically freak the Germans out with the same kind of terror they've wrought on Europe. He is joined in the cast by Eli Roth as Donny "the Bear Jew" Donowitz and Diane Kruger as Bridget von Hammersmarck, a German spy working for the British. Together they hatch up a plot to kill Hitler and the Nazis in one fell swoop during a scheduled premiere of Nazi propaganda film in France.

Melanie Laurent plays Shossana Dreyfuss, a French Jew whose family was massacred by the Nazis and whose theater is chosen to be where the premiere will be held. She devices her own plan of ridding the world of the Nazis by burning the theater down with all of them in it.

On the other side of the spectrum is Christoph Waltz, who plays SS Col. Hans Landa. This character by far has gathered up so much buzz, and rightly so. Waltz's performance is truly phenomenal as the sociopathic Jew-hunting Nazi. A complex man for sure, way beyond the immediate impression that the uniform suggests. He is suave, sophisticated, cultured, a talented linguist and the most sadistic character in the film. Each scene that plays out and has him in it is simply intense and intriguing at the same time. A combination of both which the film itself has a lot of thanks to the ingenious writing of Tarantino.

Tarantino plays out the film like a classic epic fable with a touch of gore that's seems all too real for some viewers. His dialogues are just as engrossing as the action, with each scene having witt and humor that spells out his name at every utterance. This by far is my favorite Tarantino work, next only to Reservoir Dogs.

On the whole, the film is entertaining as it should be. At two and a half-hours, even if your bladder is twice as full, you'll be hard pressed getting off your seat watching and enjoying this film.

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