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No matter what you think of Quentin Tarantino, you have to admit the man has talent and a style that stands out as a unique voice among what is put out by Hollywood. I missed this one in the theaters and was happy to see it pop up as available in Netflix streaming. When putting this up against his other movies, I say it stands with the best of them.

The movie takes place in Nazi occupied France during WWII. It begins in the French countryside as Col. Hans Landa played wonderfully by Christopher Waltz interrogates a man who he believes is harboring a Jewish family. There is a great back and forth dialog between Hans and the homeowner which slowly builds to him breaking the homeowner’s will. This is followed by his henchmen assassinating all but one of the jewish family members. One daughter makes it out of the house and flees into the countryside.

Next we are introduced the Basterds. A group of Jewish U.S. soldiers, led by Lt. Aldo Raine (played by Brad Pitt) assigned take out Nazis by any means necessary. There methods are brutal, but they are efficient. They have gained a sort of fear inducing mythical status among the German soldiers with individual nicknames such as “The Bear Jew”. This is driving the Fuhrer mad and he wants them taken care of.

We then meet Shosanna (played by Mélanie Laurent) a movie theater owner who we find out is the also the girl who escaped at the beginning of the movie. After catching the eye of Fredrick Zoller a famous German soldier, her theater is commissioned to premier a film named “Nation’s Pride” which is a propaganda movie about Zoller. This is where Shosanna and the Basterd’s stories cross paths. This film premier will have many top ranking officials including Hitler himself. Shosanna and the Basterd’s independently make plans to take out these top officials at the event. As an added bonus Col Hans Landa who Shosanna remembers vividly is also in charge of security for the event. The premiere takes place with some unexpected results and maybe a little bit of confusion for the viewer (see next paragraph).

The movie had a lot going for it. It was visually great, the story was strong, and Tarantino does his thing with the dialog. Although Brad Pitt and the Basterds are great, Christopher Guest really gets a lot of best dialog. He has a sort of subtle menace mixed with attempts at humor which only leaves the people he is talking to more uncomfortable. I enjoyed how each of the Basterds had their own backstory and I particularly liked Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz and wished we could have got a little bit more of him in the film. The film was a little gruesome at times, but I expected that, and the language was actually a little better than most of his movies, perhaps because much of it was in French and German. A few things I didn’t like (SPOILERS AHEAD) were near the end of the movie. For example I am not sure you can get around the problem of knowing the results of the assassination attempt, by simply creating an unexplained alternate reality where they pull it off. Also, Landa was very smart and calculating throughout the film, and he knew Raines had no reservations or followed any military terms of engagement when it came to killing Nazis. It makes no sense that he would leave himself so exposed at the end.

If you like Tarantino movies, you’ll love this one. It’s one of his best.

Reviewed by: Phillip Lane on July 4, 2015