INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009) - ENGLISH

Seldom, you will see a War period film that's completely fictionalised and extremely interesting.

It's a film that is in ENGLISH/FRENCH/GERMAN/ITALIAN, but just gave ENGLISH coz it's directed by an English Director, Quentin Tarantino.

War films are mostly dramatic or even melodramatic and in parts boring, coz we know that a War hero either survived a great war, or dies with great glory. But here, Basterds do neither, they live with great glory and kill the enemies (Nazis) including Hitler Just see, how they did that and that makes a great film. Had a girl not got theatre, had there not been any films in 1940's, this film would not have been made.

Tarantino the great and a uniquely gifted director brought so many elements in his story telling, that it's not easy to simply put a finger one thing and say "I liked this one more than the other" Performances by the whole ensemble cast is super. Christoph Waltz shines as the cold blooded "Jew Hunter" Hans Landa. Brad Pitt does Aldo Raine with a niche that his his own, be it uttering American accent or killing Nazis with guns. Melanie Laurent as Shosanna Dreyfus is vulnerable and shrewd. All others, just right for their roles. So casting director and Quentin Tarantino pulled off a great cast and all did extremely well.

The cinematography, art direction, production design and even the sound, the music, be it Ennio Morricone's touch of "Fur Elise" or Dmitri Tiomkins "Green Leaves of Summer" or David Bowie's "Gasoline". Wow, what a sound all that was apart from the heavy explosions and Hitler's "Nai, nai, nai, nai, nai"  squeals. So to put it simply its is technically brilliant and dramatically terrific.

Now, let me get to Quentin Tarantino, this man has given us a film like Pulp Fiction that is in any sense cannot be considered less than the most influential film in last 20 years. Now, with Inglourious, he took the writing to a very new level, where anything can be done, said, preached, and even followed. So just do what we believe and make it interesting, something that you as audience would love to see and it will work. Inglourious is a prime example of that.

The writing is so very exemplary here that the script itself is enough to be read many times, lot many characters, few plots all gathering for one big climax. Too much of happening in too little, and yet we have to figure what happens when. It's based in Chapter based narration and that too non-linear, so it's a kind of puzzle where we must figure out what happens when.

I am not sure how many times, I would have watched it in last 2-3 years, but each time I learn a new thing, a new dialogue, a new camera angle, a new emotion and I still can't get enough of this. But 2 and half hour now started to seem so much longer than it originally was. So, cutting this down to 4/5, a great movie and a must watch movie for all the movie lovers. Post Pulp Fiction, I rate this as best movie of Tarantino. Though this is inspired hugely from the 1978 film "The Inglorious Bastards", I still love this version.

A 4/5 movie, that is just great in every way except the length.