Take that opening scene, for example, in which Landa toys with his prey like, to use his own analogy, a hawk with a rat. But, after the self-indulgent riffing of Death Proof, Inglourious Basterds is focused and sharp.
Characters are introduced, pomped and circumstanced, and then almost glibly despatched the Basterds themselves barely appear, while Brad Pitt, the ostensible lead, shows up for only three of the movie’s five chapters and doesn’t fire a single shot in anger while history is adhered to with all the accuracy of an MP’s expenses claim.Īs ever with Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds reveals a director in love with the sound of his characters’ voices - sometimes to a fault, as in the third chapter, German Night In Paris, which is packed with dense conversations at the expense of dramatic momentum. As enjoyably idiosyncratic as the spelling of its title would suggest, it’s a film that takes devilish delight in feinting left when it looks like it might go right. Yet that’s Inglourious Basterds all over.
Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), a charming yet callous Nazi officer nicknamed ‘The Jew Hunter’, it becomes quickly apparent that Tarantino’s flipped a bloody middle finger at convention. But as the movie unfolds with a 20-minute conversation between a French farmer who may or may not be sheltering Jews, and Col. Tarantino’s been talking about his World War II action movie for nigh on a decade now, but the reality is very different from the rootin’, tootin’, cigar-chompin’ Where Eagles Dare/Dirty Dozen-style shoot-’em-up that had once, if you believe all you read, been tailored for Arnie and Sly. Yet within the first five minutes of Inglourious Basterds, it’s clear that he’s done it again. After all, this is the man who made his name with a heist flick that didn’t actually have a heist in it. By now, you’d think that we’d have become accustomed to Quentin Tarantino pulling the rug out from under our feet.
0 kommentar(er)
