Inglorious Basterds – No, that’s not a typo!

Quentin Tarantino returns to the world of cinema with all barrels blazing in Inglourious Basterds, the tale of a group of Jewish-American Gurellas on a mission in Nazi-Occupied France during World War II.

If you’ve seen Tartantino's other films, you'll know that he is amongst Hollywood’s most intriguing director’s. The tagline for the film is “You haven't seen war, until you’ve seen it through the eyes of Tarantino.” A little boastful perhaps, but truer words cannot be spoken of the film itself. This is ultimately a revenge fantasy that celebrates what cinema is and why it is so beloved. A world where everyone has a reputation,a role that they play like an actor in a film, and how they exploit that role to their own gain. The Basterds themselves, set out to terrify the Germans with their cold-blooded antics, making them highly feared amongst the soldiers of the Third Reich. The SS Colonel that builds a reputation as “The Jew Hunter”. The innocent girl who becomes a cinema owner, misguiding the villainous Germans into her trap. This is a film that puts on a show for us to watch, and gives us an unexpected ending. And QT rewrites the rules with a masterful grace.

Like his Cannes Festival winning classic, Pulp Fiction, Inglourious Basterds is split up into five seemingly unconnected chapters that ultimately build up to one grand event. As with Pulp Fiction, QT’s strengths shine in his dialogue. QT literally makes us sit down with his characters and have a nice, long talk (and in this movie, mostly in another language). What director has the guts to do that today? One that defies convention. One that wants to give us an experience, not just glamour. One that knows that movies need to be more than just explosions. If any of this sounds boring to you, you really don't know what you are missing, the dialogue in this film is spot on, pulling you into the scenes as if you are there with the characters, whom, by the way, all give stellar performances. The film's tone is typical of QT, satirical, whimsical, brutal, but never too serious (which is apparent in the fantastic finale).

Amongst the standout performers are, if you haven't heard by now, Brad Pitt as Lt. Aldo “The Apache” Raine, and Christoph Waltz, as the film's central villain, the genius Nazi detective known as SS Col. Hans Landa (“The Jew Hunter”). While Pitt is outstanding and hilarious in every scene he has, the true show stealer is Waltz. Here, we have a complex, riveting, despicable and above all, charming villain that you love to watch and fear for what he might do. The opening scene of the film has him searching out for the remaining hiding Jewish in the French countryside, at a farmer's home. The way Waltz slithers into the scene and how he obtains his information is mesmerizing, despite the results. If he doesn't receive an Oscar® nomination (or even the win), then I want to see the performances that beat it, because there has not been a better one this year. The character of Shoshanna(played by (Mélanie Laurent) is the films tragic character, her Jewish family taken from her in an instant, and she is helpless to stop it. She runs and hides from it all, playing her part away from the dangers of the war, but when the opportunity falls right into her lap, she seizes the moment to strike back, and the audience will cheer and shudder at her vengeance. Laurent takes that innocence and uses it to propel her character into World War II's greatest fictional (and unknown) heroine.

At 153 minutes, the film does seem a tad long, and a few of the long scenes of dialogue could have been trimmed down, but the film never ceases to be an entertaining and is by far one of the best theatrical experiences that has come out this summer.

Written by Jeff Butler