Released 21st August 2009 @ Showcase De Lux, Bristol

After over ten years on the drawing board but only 9 months in the making, we finally have the finished product of the script Tarantino has been talking up for well over a decade, and which was originally touted as his follow up to Jackie Brown. Inglorious Basterds has always been the one which Tarantino aficionados considered would save his somewhat waning career and, to a certain extent, they were right.

From the offing we are presented with a tense one-on-one scene between Christopher Waltz’s excellent ‘Jew Hunter’ and a French dairy farmer, played by Denis Menochet, who is suspected of hiding a Jewish family. This, the first of several tense, dialogue heavy scenes between camp but terrifying Nazis and those trying to foil their attempts at world domination. These scenes demonstrate Tarantino’s characteristic deftness with dialogue and show that Inglourious Basterds certainly lives up to Tarantino’s original promise of the film being; “a big fucking night at the movies”.

The core of the film consists of The Basterds, a group of American Jewish soldiers led by Brad Pitt’s superb Lt. Aldo Raine’s exploits trying to kill as many Nazi officers as possible. But in true Tarantino style, this storyline is interlinked with several others which come together towards the end in a plot to blow up a cinema where the premiere of a Nazi propaganda film is being held. The film is a potent mix of Tarantino’s characteristic gratuitous violence, ever present nods to the cinema which has influenced him as a filmmaker, with the addition of an element of screwball comedy somewhat reminiscent of the work of the Coen Brothers. Although the criticism often levelled at Tarantino that he has recessed into a state of adolescence as a filmmaker since the release of his most mature offering, Jackie Brown in 1997, is still apparent after viewing Inglourious Basterds, it cannot be denied that Tarantino is still one of the few directors who produce films truly worthy of viewing on the big screen. To pass on this opportunity and wait for the DVD would truly be a mistake.

www.inglouriousbasterds-movie.com

Sean Griffiths