INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS
By: Iggy Michniacki on 12.18.2009
The Movie Itself:
I’m going to say it, here, at the beginning… Quentin Tarantino is underrated! Yes, underrated! I understand he has a large fan following, his movies are often successful at the box office, he’s courted by studios for his next work, and his face and voice are recognizable but he is an underrated writer and director.
World War II is taking place, and Germany has recently occupied France on their quest to cleanse the world. Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) has put together a unit that is to drop into France and create havoc for the Nazis. Due to their crude treatment of Nazi soldiers, their guerilla like warfare, and their ‘take no prisoners’ motto they quickly earn the reputation as the Bastards. The most notable of them, Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), gains the reputation as the Bear Jew for his literal beating down, without any remorse, of the Nazi soldiers he comes across.
While the Bastards quickly pick apart units of the Third Reich’s SS, an escaped Jew, Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent), is ‘annoyed’ by a German soldier, Pvt Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), who is on a mission to win her affection. He explains to her his heroisms, as he was stuck in a bell tower and killed off many of the ally troops single handed. Upon doing so he was rewarded and casted to play himself in the movie Nation’s Pride which depicted the situation and was set to rally the German war cry.
Finally, the German’s decide to move the movie premiere to Shosanna’s theater, due to Pvt. Zoller’s affection for her, and invite the elites of the Third Reich to enjoy a premiere in Paris that will help keep the German’s in control of the war. Lt. Hans Lando (Christoph Waltz), a major player on the German side, helps negotiate the terms and brings the parallel stories all together for a finale at the theater that no Nazi would forget.
The movie is just brilliant, one of Tarantino’s finest. Inglourious Basterds takes a turn away from the advertised previews and offers more dialogue, suspense and drama than anybody could see coming. Yes the action is there too, but this movie steps back towards Pulp Fiction offering a dose of conversations, characters, and complexity that even Tarantino’s other movies don’t stand up to.
I’ve heard complaints about Brad Pitt’s character and his acting in this movie, but I found Lt. Aldo Raine to be great. His accent is hilarious and his leadership skills are different. Pitt offers another crazy accent for his role and rivals some of his best performances even though his role is much less than advertised. But the taking of the cake (when it comes to characters) goes to Christopher Waltz as he was the glue that brought all of Inglourious Basterds characters together. His character is a twisted, dark genius that is present from the first scene to the finale and does an incredible job of being the weasel that everybody loves to hate.
Other character notes would be in most of the cast, as the accents, characters and back stories were simply brilliant and well played. The previously mentioned, Eli Roth, was fantastic as the Bear Jew and his lack of remorse for the beaten bodies at his feat showed a much deeper and darker side of a hero than most war movies will ever show. The women, Mélanie Laurent and Dianne Kruger, are simply beautiful and brilliant as well making their limited roles count throughout the entire movie.
The success lies in the characters and even more so in the equality every character received in this production. Tarantino does a masterful job of making this movie about the conflict as opposed to a certain character and that is something so many ware movies lack. The focus on fictional characters is present, but the complete lack of what is going on is not present and this aspect instantly separates Inglourious Basterds from any other war movie that has hit the large screen.
Going to the discussion of Tarantino being underrated, starts with the incredible argument of this script and the scripts of the majority of his previous movies. Tarantino once again has proven to be one of the better writers in Hollywood today and he often goes unnoticed by a good portion of America and the award shows due to the violent nature of his films. However, Tarantino proves once again that best picture winners in the past can’t stand firm with the dialogue, imagination and complexity that Tarantino constantly throws into his scripts. As mentioned, Inglourious Basterds covers a war (the Acadamy loves war) and does so in such a manner that it is like nothing we have ever seen before.
However, there are some complaints that somebody with a degree in history, such as myself, feels the need to bring up. Adolf Hitler was not the frantic, demanding, lunatic that Inglourious Basterds (as well as every other Hollywood movie) pegs him to be. He was calm and usually had his ‘right hand’ men begging to please him. Hitler rarely came out and said this is how he wanted it, but instead had people guessing due to his beliefs and past leaving the blood off of his hands and on the hands of others. Not coming anywhere near defending Hitler, as it was very rewarding to see Nazi soldiers and leaders treated in such a disgusting manner in Inglourious Basterds but the theatrical Hitler has never been the same as the genuine, sick minded leader that turned a country from weak to strong and poor to rich.
This movie is a successful masterpiece and is finally getting Tarantino some award recognition, and rightfully so. The acting, directing, plot, scenes, depth, crew, costumes, settings, and everything else you can think about that is related to this movie was pure genious and deserves a look at from anybody and everybody (over the age of seventeen of course!).
Rating: 9/10
 The Presentation:
How do you make a great movie even better? By saying that Inglourious Basterds flirts with perfection, both with its video and audio presentations, delivering a near reference performance.
The Mpeg-4 video presentation, in full 1080p, is simply brilliant and vibrant. Colors are probably one of the most noticeable positives, which is somewhat hard to fathom with such a dark and grimy presentation. Reds, obviously, stand out the most from uniform accents to swastika centered flags hanging in the background. Other colors do pull through nicely, with green grass popping brightly off the screen and golds, silvers, browns and other neutral colors really getting an opportunity to shine here as well.
The video also does good in other areas, such as the the detail and the three-dimensional image. The detail is incredibly strong with markings on guns, uniforms and characters being very noticeable. Stubble on faces, imperfections in architecture, the intricate design of the medals and ranks are all on full display as if one was front-and-center in these scenes. The image maintains the pop the entire way through and never drops to a two dimensional image. Characters seem to be in the room as opposed to on the screen and scenes also intrude into the viewers home making one feel as part of the show.
The reason this presentation isn’t perfect is due to a few, very minor details. The image can appear soft at times, a few very sporadic times, but nonetheless a few scenes look less sharp than others. And black levels don’t hold as much detail as some other movies have and can, at least not the entire way through. Saying that, I will say that nobody will be disappointed with this video as it shines on Blu-ray.
The audio is a real winner as well, with a lossless DTS-HD 5.1 English track (that has a mix of other languages) that really utilizes all the speakers quite well. Dialogue is wonderfully loud, crisp and clear never dropping a word behind any other sound. As this being one of Tarantino’s more dialogue driven movies this is important and people should be excited with the amount of detail in the conversations due to the variety of accents that occur throughout the entire feature.
The center channel isn’t the only speaker that gets to show off as the others work masterfully as well. Sound effects are down right brilliant, utilizing every inch of the other four speakers and replicating its source perfectly. Sound from the rears is strong and loud, never making this feel like a front-heavy presentation. Sound effects come from the rear speakers just as vibrant as they do the front ones – when the scene calls for it. Music comes at you from every direction as well, engulfing the viewers in the experience. The subwoofer is also lively and active making every action sequence a loud and entertaining spectacle of noise. The audio is near perfect, if not entirely perfect, as there was not one issue I could find with this audio presentation. Another great benefit is that the DTS-HD track is also offered in both French and Spanish allowing three different languages to share the high definition experience.
Rating: 9/10 (video 9/10, audio 10/10)
 The Extras:
The extra features for Inglourious Basterds are a bit misleading. If you read the back of the cover art one is lead to believe there are three full length features on this single disc, but in reality there isn’t. Another couple of things I found to be quite interesting were the lack of a commentary as well as the amount of features that were in standard definition. However, there are quite a few extras that will tickle your fancy, but the lack of certain features makes one question the future this title will see (can we say… special edition).
- Alternate and Extended Scenes (HD): There are a few scenes here, but to be honest the matter lies in the scenes that were discussed and missing. There are scenes Quentin Tarantino discussed that are nowhere to be found, and the rumors float around prequal due to this.
- Nation’s Pride – Full Feature (SD): A very misleading title, with Full Feature, included. Nonetheless, it is the full feature, even though it is only six and a half minutes long. However, this is an interesting piece.
- Making of Nation’s Pride (HD): A quick look behind the scenes of the men who made the movie within the movie.
- Roundtable Discussion (HD): Not really a roundtable, more of just a few chairs, Brad Pitt and Quentin Tarantino sit down with Elvis Mitchell, New York Times, and discuss a few aspects of the film, mostly the makings of.
- The Original 'Inglorious Bastards' (SD): Once again, a misleading title. I was pleased to venture into this feature thinking I had another full length feature in high definition in this set and instead it was a quick featurette. The first half discusses the making of and the including of the original director in the new movie. The second part of the featurette is just a few random clips from the original.
- Conversation with Rod Taylor (HD): Rod Taylor, from Hitchcock fame, did a bit of a cameo as Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds. In this featurette he sits down and discusses it; he is quite an entertaining man.
- Rod Taylor on Victoria Bitter (HD): What better than a featurette that discusses beer?
- Quentin Tarantino's Camera Angel (SD): This is correct, angel not angle. This is a short featurette about the clapboard assistant Tarantino has come to use frequently. Let’s just say she’s not the strong, quiet type.
- Hi Sallys (SD): A standard definition collection of the crew and cast saying ‘Hi Sally’ to Sally Menke (editor).
- Poster Gallery Tour (SD): A guide through the poster gallery.
- Poster Gallery (HD): Ummm…. The poster gallery.
- Trailers (HD): It includes the theatrical and teaser trailers for Inglourious Basterds.
- Pocket Blu Interactivity: An aweseom feature that is available for download on the iPhone and iPod touch that allows the viewer to use their home network to connect their phone to the network enabled Blu-ray player. This is pretty cool, as all of the menus can be accessed via the iPhone (in my case) without disturbing the presentation on the screen. You can sift through the scene selection, access the main menu and access BD-Live right on the touch screen in one’s hand.
- D-Box
- Digital Copy
Rating: 6/10
Overall:
A simply brilliant movie that transferred to a simply brilliant Blu-ray presentation, Inglourious Basterds has my vote for one of the best movies of the year, if not the best movie of the year. The video and audio are simply stunning, with the audio being perfect and the video falling pretty close to said perfection. The extras are lengthy and entertaining adding another dimension to this already great package. This movie comes with a huge stamp of approval and the highest of recommendations.
Rating: 8/10
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