Inglourious Basterds

The film opens on a farm. A man is chopping wood. He spots someone approaching, and hurriedly tells his child to get inside the house. It could be the opening of The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, but instead of Angel Eyes, it's a man they call the Jew hunter, SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). The two men then enter the house and sit down at the table where Waltz, echoing Van Cleef completely, is calmly getting the information he wants from the other visibly nervous man.

Tarantino pays tribute to Leone's masterpiece in his opening sequence. It matches the corresponding opening in the classic western perfectly in tone, in mounting tension, and drags out the suspense for maximum effect. It is quite honestly one of the best start to any film I've seen in a long time, which is such a shame that the rest of Inglourious Basterds just can't keep up the same quality.

My main problem with Basterds is that it's extremely uneven. There's a lot of time spent talking about film, half of it is practically a film about film, and film plays an integral part of the plot. Characters have conversations about German cinema, during a briefing there's talk of how important film is to the German military's propaganda, and there is a lot of name drops in dialogue. What's interesting at first, becomes tired and forced. When one of the main characters says the line "In France, we respect the directors" I couldn't help but feel this is a little ego-trip on Quentin's part. I think it would have been better if it hadn't concentrated on so much reference.

When the film is at it's best, it's all Christoph Waltz. Hans Landa, The Jew Hunter is equal parts charming and chilling, it's rare to see a villain of this stature and the film is all his. No other character in Basterds is as interesting, no other actor here is as brilliant, and no scene of the film is as good as those with Landa. Apart from one moment of awful dialogue where he says "That's a bingo" (I think it's far too cheesy having a foreign character gaffe a common saying), I'd say he is by far Tarantino's best written character.

I think the reason I like Landa so much is because he's extremely unlike other Tarantino characters, he's particularly subtle, his motives are hidden rather than overt, and he probably has some of the best dialogue out of any character in any of Tarantino's films. Brad Pitt by comparison plays a one dimensional cartoon: Lieutenant Aldo Raine is good for a few laughs, like when he's posing an Italian, but there really isn't anything interesting about him at all. The only other character in the film who seems like a fully fleshed out person is Shosanna (Mélanie Laurent), and her and Landa share one of the best scenes of the film.

As far as the direction goes, if there's one thing I'll say about Quentin, he knows how to pace a scene. He can really prolong the suspense without it dragging into boredom. Take the scene in Pulp Fiction for example, where Butch takes his time selecting his weapon before rescuing Marsellus. He never rushes things. There's an absolutely magnificent scene half way through Inglourious Basterds where the basterds are meeting a contact in a basement pub. It culminates in a spectacular (if brief) shoot-out, but it's everything leading up to the action that makes it so brilliant, the tension as the undercover soldiers risk being found out builds up so well.

Overall, it is a film that falls short of being great. While we're treated to one of the most charismatic movie villains in a long time, none of the other characters are really engaging. There's some absolutely terrific scenes, like the opening and bar shoot-out, but even though it didn't seem like the film ran for 153 minutes, there was still some scenes where the film dragged, and I felt that all the pontificating about films was fairly unnecessary. Tarantino cheekily ends the film with a very self-referential line "I think this might be my masterpiece", but it would take a lot more to topple Pulp Fiction as the masterpiece. It's a hell of a lot better than Kill Bill though.