Inglourious Basterds

Oh. My. God.

What. The Fuck.

Well, Quentin's certainly been at the crystal meth again.

Once Upon A Time In Nazi Occupied France says the title card to the film's
first chapter, and yep, much as this is a WWII flick, it feels a hell of a lot
like a spaghetti western. Including the soundtrack.

So...

Joseph Goebbels has a new film coming out, his latest propaganda epic. There's
going to be a film premiere. The high ranking bigwigs of the Third Reich will
be there.

The star of the film is sweet on a girl who owns a Parisian cinema, and so
arranges that the premiere be there.

The allies get wind of this thing, and so send in the Basterds, a collection of
US secret service dudes who are basically The Jewish Dirty Dozen, who prior to
this have been committing atrocities on Nazis for a while. There is scalping.
Onscreen scalping. Be warned.

And just to make it interesting, the Parisian cinema owner is Jewish herself,
and is bent on revenge for the death of her family.

And then All Fucking Hell Breaks Loose in what has to be the least historically
accurate American made war film of all time. Think on the implications of this.

Of late, there have been a lot of films in which we have been encouraged to
consider the human angle behind the Nazi regime, and been encouraged to think,
in films like Good, The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas and The Reader, about how
real, normal people became complicit. This is not that kind of film. This is
straight out of the old school of 70s and 80s war movies where basically, the
Nazis are there purely as fair game. In fact, the ending is cathartic wish
fulfillment of epic proportions, discarding all sense and reason in the name of a
spectacular bloodbath.

There's any number of great performances, and great dialogue. A lot of the best
dialogue goes to Christoph Waltz as Col. Landa, who is an SS Officer and
shitbag of epic proportions. I'd consider this Tarantino certainly back to the
form above that he displayed in Kill Bill, if not up to Pulp Fiction genius
levels.

Ultimately, this is a hugely enjoyable, completely irresponsible mayhem fest.
Something tells me that I should find it distasteful, but what the hell.