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Released by: Universal Studios
Released on: December 15, 2009
Director: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Chritoph Waltz, Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Sylvester Groth, Til Schweiger, B.J. Novak, Omar Doom, Diane Kruger, Daniel Bruhl
Year: 2009
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The Movie:
Quentin Tartantino's Inglourious Basterds has very little to do with Enzo G. Casterllari's Inglorious Bastards, a war film that starred Bo Svenson and Fred The Hammer Williamson in a Dirty Dozen style suicide mission. There are nods to that first film, sure, but this is hardly a remake even if it may have at one point been slated as such.
When the movie begins in occupied France during the Second World War, a French dairy farmer and his three daughters are approached by a German SS officer, Colonal Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) who suspects the man of hiding Jews in his home. His suspicions are correct and his men murder the family hidden under the floorboards in cold blood - though their teenage daughter, Shoshanna, manages to escape with her life. Fast forward a few years to Paris and Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) is running a posh theater. After being approached by a war hero-cum-film star named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) whose romantic intensions don't interest her at all, she winds up being forced to dine with Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth) and his interpreter (Julie Dreyfus) who ultimately decides to host the premiere of Zoller's film debut, A Nation's Pride, at her theater. Anyone who is anyone in the Nazi party will be in attendance, including Landa, and so Shoshanna and her black boyfriend decide they should sabotage the event and burn all of the attendees alive.
While all of this is going on, a rag tag group of American Special Forces soldiers, of Jewish descent, lead by Lieutenant Aldo Raine and populated by the likes of Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) and Donnie 'The Jew Bear' Donowitz (Eli Roth) are running around France scalping any Nazi's that they come into contact with. Eventually they meet up with a British agent (Michael Fassbender) who, after a meeting with General Ed Fenech (Mike Myers) and Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor), puts them in touch with a German actress named Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), who is willing to help Raine and his men get into the premiere being held at Shoshanna's theater so that they can kill Hitler and any other Nazis who might be there.
Despite Pitt's headlining status in the marketing campaign, he's only a supporting actor here, though he steals pretty much every scene he's in, playing his Aldo Raine with a ridiculous southern accent but with an equally ridiculous amount of enthusiasm. You definitely get the feeling that he and his fellow Basterds are having a blast with the material here. On the more serious side of the same coin are Laurent, Waltz and Bruhl, all three of whom deliver excellent performances, Laurent in particular. Her Shoshanna is entirely sympathetic, her revenge driven by the purest of motives and entirely patriotic and selfless in its intent. On top of that, Tarantino throws in a lot of fun cameos from many of the aforementioned performers, many of which are so subtle you may not even recognize them (Bo Svenson and Enzo G. Castellari both have blink-and-you'll-miss-it on appearances). The acting in this picture is very strong across the board, and all involved handle not only the humor and the action that the picture contains but also the more dramatic aspects of the picture with equally impressive skill.
Of course, this being a Tarantino film you expect some of his trademarks, so don't be surprised to hear plenty of borrowed music or to see a foot-tastic sequence or two. The sounds of Ennio Morricone run rampant through the film but feel entirely appropriate, while pop numbers from David Bowie and others add an interesting contrast to the score and lyrically speaking at least fit the tone of the picture very well. Some moments of shocking and sporadic violence, not the least of which is some graphic scalping on the part of the Basterds, reminds us that war is a nasty thing but at the same time is so over the top as to be comedic in a twisted sort of way. The film is also beautifully shot, and stands as the best looking of any of his pictures so far in terms of cinematography, set design and color composition.
Thematically speaking you can't help but feel that t his movie is really just one big, flashy love letter to European cinema. At one point a character says 'This is France, we respect director's here' and the film literally allows the theater to save the day not only metaphorically speaking but physically as well. The backgrounds are peppered with marquees containing references to the likes of Leni Riefenstahl and G.W. Pabst but to French and Italian filmmakers as well and there are all manner of interesting German, Italian and French movie posters scattered throughout the picture as well. An obvious film buff himself, you get the feeling that Tarantino has basically made a movie for movie lovers. He's created a picture that provides drama, comedy, romance, action, adventure and horror and he's (not surprisingly) thrown in loads of tributes to those who preceded and influenced him. If that weren't enough in and of itself, he's done it with loads of style and made it a whole lot of entertaining fun.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Universal presents the film in an impressive 2.40.1 AVC encoded 1080p high definition transfer, preserving the film's theatrical aspect ratio. The first thing you'll probably notice here is how impressive the colors look - there's a whole lot of that 'pop' that you sometimes expect from a good Blu-ray transfer and every hue, from the greens of the fields in the opening scene to the oranges and reds of the fire during the film's finale all come across with amazing clarity and definition. Black levels are just as good, very deep and strong, never breaking up or showing any compression artifacts. As far as detail goes, some scenes are sharper and more defined than others, though it definitely seems that this has to do with the source material rather than the encoding job. There aren't any edge enhancement or digital noise reduction issues to complain about, just a little bit of natural softness here and there. Facial close ups generally show the most detail though textures generally look quite good as well. All in all, this is a pretty impressive effort.
Even more impressive is the DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track on this disc. You'll notice from the opening Morricone track just how rich and full the score sounds here, spread out nicely across the soundstage and really pushing right out of your speakers without ever sounding forced or heavy handed. Levels are properly balanced allowing the quieter and more conversational aspects of the film to ring through nice and clear while simultaneously letting the more action intensive sequences pack a hefty punch. Gun shots sound very strong, and there are a few spots where you'll probably jump a bit, but that's obviously the intended effect. Bass response is strong and bouncy, filling out the lower end of the mix beautifully. The mix here never feels over the top, rather, it suits the film perfectly. There's absolutely nothing to complain about here in regards to the audio, it sounds excellent.
Standard definition DTS 5.1 Surround Sound tracks are provided in French and Spanish with optional white subtitles available in English SDH, French and Spanish. During the scenes that are spoken in German, French and Italian forced yellow subtitles appear on the screen to translate the dialogue.
The most extensive extra on this disc is a half hour long Roundtable Discussion in which Tarantino and Pitt talk with Elvis Mitchell about their work on this production. It's a pretty interesting talk that covers the production schedule, Tarantino's constant working and reworking of the script, character development, casting and rehearsals and plenty more. There's a good sense of humor to all of this but it's also pretty interesting.
The A Nation's Pride short film that Eli Roth directed is presented here in its six minute entirety and seeing it without the feature surrounding it gives you a pretty good appreciation for just how closely Roth nailed the look and feel of the German propaganda films being made at the time. A four minute making of documentary accompanies it and gives us a look behind the scenes as Roth was shooting this film within a film.
Also quite interesting are the three deleted scenes that are included here. Running a combined twelve minutes, here you'll find an extended bit from the scene where Shoshanna has lunch with Goebbels, some excised material from the scene where the drinkers are playing their game in La Louisiane, and an alternate version of the scene leading into the premier of A Nation's Pride. None of these are particularly important nor do they really change the movie much, but they're fun to see.
From there, Universal supplies a bunch of shorter, less interesting supplements, most of which are amusing more so than they are informative. The Original Inglorious Bastards is an eight minute bit that pays tribute to Enzo Castellari's original film and talks about the cameos that some of the players from that picture had in his reimagining while A Conversation With Rod Taylor is a brief seven minute discussion about how Tarantino used the legendary actor to play Winston Churchill in the movie. Rod Taylor On Victoria Bitter is a three minute bit where he talks about Tarantino and beer and how it all relates - amusing enough. Tarantino's Camera Angel is a three minute collection of one-liners that a clapboard operator on the film spouted off during production, while Hi Sallys is a two minute collection of greetings that Tarantino and his compatriots sent to editor Sally Menke when they shipped the footage off to her.
Rounding out the extras are eight minutes worth of trailers and promo spots, a film poster tour segment that shows off all of the film posters that we see in the background of the feature, an interactive trivia game, a still gallery of promotional art, some classy animated menus, a bookmarking option, chapter stops, and Blu-ray live functionality. A digital copy of the film is included on a second disc. The disc is also D-Box motion code enabled.
The Final Word:
Well acted, well written and beautifully shot, Inglourious Basterds is not only a really well made film from a cinematic standpoint but it's also a whole lot of fun and Universal has done a very impressive job with its Blu-ray debut even if some might consider the extras to be a bit on the light side.