Inglorious Basterds

The trailer for this film suggests a gruesome romp through occupied France by a band of guerrilla Nazi hunters. The trailer doesn't lie, they're in here, but it isn't about them. This is a film about victims who don't give in to insurmountable odds, rather they face their persecutors head-on. As the film opens an evil is established. Then a solution to destroying that evil is presented. What follows are the details and the obstacles that are encountered along the way. It all seems to fit within the parameters of your typical war time drama. The story is even told in a completely chronological fashion, this hardly seems worth mentioning, except that this is a Quentin Tarantino film... Tarantino has tricked us royally with the trailer and the title of this film into thinking we're going to see an updated, blood soaked "Dirty Dozen". Instead we get a poignant film that examines the American fascination with adapting history to make us feel good about ourselves. Sure there's the occasional "Valley of Elah" and "Flags of Our Fathers" that demonize the American war effort, but overall war films have been made to make us feel good and proud about what we've done (or wish we'd done in this case). Tarantino has made a classic war picture, with a little bit of classic "Tarantino" splattered about for good measure. The characters, the locations, the story all could be right out of any other World War II film. It's what the characters say and what they do to each other that makes this stand apart. What Tarantino does wonderfully is that he gives us a sloppy mess of an idea, then he throws characters and storylines at us left and right. When it's all over though, the mess and clutter is forgotten, and the conclusion seems to be the only one possible. I think what I appreciated most was that although there were references to other Tarantino films, this film stands alone. "Pulp Fiction", "Reservoir Dogs" and "Jackie Brown" all are cut from the same cloth. "Kill Bill" and "Death Proof" are kind of limited by their source material. But here Tarantino takes on a genre that has an established, distinguished history and makes a film entirely his own.