by Jamie Clubb

Created on: August 31, 2010

Plot:

1944 in an alternative history; and two plots are set in motion to kill the high ranking members of the Nazi party as they attend the premier of Joseph Goebbels’ latest propaganda feature, “Nation’s Pride”, in occupied France. One plan is orchestrated by a ragtag bunch of Jewish-American soldiers, chosen for their killing expertise and led by First Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) and known as the “Basterds”. Designed to inspire fear behind enemy lines, they ambush Nazi units in occupied territory and kill all bar one. Raine demands a hundred physical Nazi scalps off each of his eight soldiers. The remaining survivor is left with a swastika cut into his forehead. They plan to blow up the cinema.

Meanwhile Shosanna Dreyfuss (Mélanie Laurent) is the lone survivor of a Jewish French family hunted down and killed by the soldiers of SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), and now assumes a new identity running a small French cinema. By chance she meets Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a German sniper “Nation’s Pride” is based on and who also stars as himself in the picture. Taking a fancy to Dreyfuss, he convinces Goebbels to premier the film as the small cinema. Seeing an open opportunity to gain revenge, Dreyfuss plans to set fire to the flammable projector film and burn the cinema to the ground with all the high ranking Nazi party members. However, there are some surprise guests – Adolph Hitler and Hans Landa…

Review:

Closer examination by the more literate of film-watchers will note the curious misspelling of the film’s two title words. This is in spite of the fact that the title is copied from the 1978 “macaroni combat” film, “The I)nglorious Bastards”. However, for affectianos of the brand this is typical Tarantino eccentricity.  It is just typical of him to misspell the title of a B movie and name this particular picture his masterpiece. So far, box office returns would indicate that the pride Tarantino feels for the picture is shared by the general public – it is his highest grossing picture to date and has won a lot of critical acclaim.  

Tarantino is a curious example of the auteur filmmaker. He courts mainstream, arthouse and cult appeal in equal quantities, never really fitting into any of the usual categories. He regularly divides opinions too – to the extent that you find few people occupying the middle ground. You either

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