Title: Inglourious Basterds
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Running time: 2 hours 32 minutes
Genre: Thriller, Action, Drama
Most of the time, I would not have watch a movie with such titles and the Nazi era thingy is really not my cup of tea. However, it was either watching a Michael Jackson movie, a Chinese poker game movie or this, so I chose the lesser of three evils :P.
What made me chose this movie is mainly the director, Quentin Tarantino and the name of Brad Pitt... and just to show how unpopular this movie is in Malaysia... for the first time, I had the cinema all by myself! Okay, initially, there were a couple but less then halfway through the movie, the left the cinema.
The story revolves in Nazi occupied France during the World War II. It started off with how a young Jewish refugee, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) witnessed the murder of her family by Colonel Hans Landa (Chirstoph Waltz). She escaped and several years later, an opportunity presents itself to her (Fredrick Zoller by Daniel Bruhl) which she starts plotting her vengeance. There were also another group of people who called themselves "the Basterds" led by Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) who were plotting the assassination of the Nazis as well.
This movie might not go down well for a lot of people. First of all, it's gruesome... ever watched Kill Bill? Yup, it's on the level of gruesome though through the effort made by censors, it is less so. Anyway, for me, I think that this is a brilliant movie... in a twisted sort of way.
It doesn't revolve around the normal good vs bad kind of plot. You would be feeling bad when you see the 'bad guys' die in this movie... well, for some of them anyway. The director is able to express the reality of the war era in a very convincing manner. He constantly reminds us that there is such a thing called 'unreasonable' incidents. What I meant was there are a lot of scenes in which things happen for no reason at all. Bad things happen to the good and bad guys and good things happen to both too. I know this kind of thing happen in other movie as well, but it was presented in such a way that would really shake you to the core. It touches the core of humanity... and most people who watch it might not like to be reminded of their own true self throughout the movie. If this movie were to be shown during my college studying year, it would have made a fascinating discussion.
The storyline, although is simple, the director introduced a lot of plot twists inside to keep it going for two and half hours. There are not much of action since this is more of a brain over brawn kind of movie.
However, this movie is mostly using German as its main language... so, if you're not a subtitle reading kind of person, you might be put off by it. Also, it is a slow movie... again, if you're an action fan, it's not your movie. And since this movie touches on Jews and Nazis, it is important to have an open mind as well... though I would say that this advice is more applicable for Germans, French and Jews.
For me, I do not regret watching this movie... it's a soul touching movie... not your normal crying bucketful of love movie... I meant it is a movie that makes you think and reassess one self. And oh, by the way, this movie is fiction... you should not use this as a history lesson :P.
Trivia: Maggie Cheung is supposed to have a scene in the movie, but was deleted during the final cut :(... and no, the there is no typo in the title... the director purposely wrote it as such.
Bottomline: Not your everyday kind of movie... watch with an open mind.
Bamboo Ranking: 3.8 / 5.0
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