I want to start of this review by saying I am a huge Quenten Tarantino fan, I have been following this release of this movie for about five years now, before either of the Kill Bill movies so needless to say I was pretty excited to finally get to see it.
Tarantino is known for a style that is all to his own, and this movie is no different. If you are looking for a movie heavy on character development and one that follows the rules of most Hollywood movies you will not like this movie. However if you are looking for a creative piece of art, that demonstrates a directors skill in the craft then I think you will love this movie.
IB takes place during world war II and most of the movie takes place in Nazi occupied France. Brad Pitt leads a crew of Jews (the Basterds) on a Nazi hunting mission to drive fear into the heart of the SS. There tactics are brutal to say the least. However I do not want to give the impression that this movie is strictly about Nazi hunting it because for the most part the Basterds are just a small part of the overall theme of this movie. In fact I left wanting to know more of each of the individuals that made up the Basterd. In particular Eli Roth's character (the Bear Jew) and Brad Pitt's character Aldo Raines. Tarantino often doesn't explain much background to the characters he writes so well. For instance in Pulp Fiction we new Vincent Vega (John Travolta) had been to Amsterdam, had been away for the states for a while, but we really did not know what made him so badass. Instead the audience is allowed to kind of make up there own history for the characters. I don't mind that style, however sometimes I think it really helps with developing characters when you give a little more background instead of letting the audience decide. With that being said I never really felt for any of the characters in this movie, not like I did in other Tarantino films. I rooted for them, because they were killing Nazi's but didn't really sympathize with why they were doing it, even if that reason is painfully obvious.
The character that stole the movie was the one of the years/decades best bad guys. Col Hans Landa played by Chris Waltz stole the show as the SS officer known as the Jew Hunter. In the opening scene we meet Landa on the French country side as he is interrogating a local family who he suspects may be harboring Jews. Landa is meticulous in his work, and you can tell he doesn't care about being a Nazi he just really enjoys his job, and he does it well. By the end of the movie he was by far my favorite character, and although you can never root for someone known as the Jew Hunter he was by far the most interesting character. I wouldn't be surprised if he was up for an academy award. He was that good.
I don't really want to give away much of the story or plot because I am sure most have not seen it, so I will just continue to comment on the style in which I really enjoyed. Besides the lack of character development, there was not much of the directing I did not like. Tarantino has a way of building tension through dialogue that few directors can do. A few scenes in particular, the opening scene and a scene in the basement of a bar, start out simple enough. Just regular people doing regular things, you know that it is going to lead to horrific violence (Tarantino movie) but you don't know how it is going to get there, and the dialogue just builds that suspense.
The movie is spoken in French, Italian, German, and English so there are subtitles, and I think there are scenes in which I have no idea why Tarantino left them in there because they do nothing to further the story or develop the characters. So this movie is long and at times has some pacing issues. If you want a non stop action movie this is not the movie for you. However if style and creativity is your type of movie, than I think you are really going to like this. Again, I wish we learned more about the Basterds as the title would state should be the focus of the movie, however there is enough substance for any movie lover to really enjoy. Tarentino has a pretentiousness that some how works, and he displays that very well with this movie that he himself called his masterpiece.
