(2009; English, French, German, Italian) Why not title this movie "Englorious Bassturds" or "In Glowing Basket Wards" or "End-Glory Backasswards" or "Engorged Bats' Innards" or … whatever. Displaying his trademark gut-wrenching graphic violence and grim humor along with enough subtitles to qualify as a foreign film, director/writer Quentin Tarantino's movie masterdpiece, partly based on actual events, of wishful-thinking for Jewish vengeance, incorporating themes of injustice to American Indians and black slaves, certainly will leave its mark in cinematic history.

It begins in 1941 (a medley of Beethoven's "Für Elise" and a tune from The Alamo by Dimitri Tiomkin and Paul Francis Webster on the soundtrack) with a visit by SS Col Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), appearing affable and multi-lingually gregarious with a core of cruelty (reveling in orally torturing people during interrogations to get information or confession), to Perrier La Pardite's dairy farm as the notorious "Jew Hunter" seeks the Dreyfus family (hiding like rats beneath the floorboards): "I can think like a Jew." Only a teenage girl escapes, Shoshanna (Mélanie Laurent), after whom Col Landa calls, as if giving consent.

A descendent of mountain man Jim Bridger, Lt Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, with a mustache, swagger, and drawl possibly borrowed from Clark Gable) recruits Jewish-American soldiers for his company of Basterds, who will wear civilian attire to pursue and ambush the enemy (taking no prisoners), each of whom must provide him with 100 Nazi scalps: "Nazi ain't got humanity."

Adolph Hitler complains of the atrocities committed on German soldiers. Pvt Butz experiences firsthand the methods of the Basterds: Sgt Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), aka "The Bear Jew," swings his bat to beat an officer to death in front of the German soldier ("Batter up. You're on deck"), who after giving up information, has his forehead scarred with a swastika to mark him for life.

In June 1944 in Nazi-occupied Paris the German war-hero Pvt Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Brühl) chats up Emmanuelle Mimieux, owner of a cinema where he recommends to Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels that Nation's Pride, a motion picture of his marksmanship exploits starring himself, be premiered. Taken to meet with Goebbels (among his ambitions was the goal to replace Hollywood's Jewish-dominated film industry with that of the Third Reich's filmmakers, such as G.W. Pabst and Leni Riefenstahl), his translator Francesca Mondino (Julie Dreyfus), and Zoller, Emmanuelle must then face Col Landa, in charge of security, for an unnerving interview.

(Does he know her true identity as Shoshanna?) While he requests an alcoholic beverage for himself, he orders a glass of milk for her along with thick cream for their strudels. (Is he already planning a means toward surviving what he may expect will eventually be an Allied victory?)

Back at the theatre Emmanuelle tells Marcel (Jacky Ido), her black projectionist and lover, her plot to end the movie with a celluloid conclusion of her own making as they use her collection of 350 nitrate-based movie reels to set the house on fire.

In Britain, Winston Churchill listens as Gen Ed Fenech (Mike Myers) informs Lt Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender), who in civilian life had been a film critic, of his upcoming role in Operation Kino to "blow up the basket" containing all the rotten eggs - at the premier of Nation's Pride will be Goebbels, Göring, Bormann, and most of the German High Command, including many officers in the SS and Gestapo. Lt Hicox, who speaks fluent German, is dropped into the French village of Nadine where he meets up with the Basterds and the German actress Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), who is a British spy; he is to accompany her as her German-captain escort to the premier along with Sgt Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), also posing as a German officer.

However, in the basement café while another party of enlisted German soldiers celebrates news of the birth of Cpl Wilhelm Wicki's child (the young father requests and receives from the famous actress a signed napkin), Maj Hellstrom of the Gestapo takes a seat at the table with the actress and the two imposters, questions Hicox's accent, and orders a bottle of scotch for them as a parting gesture when he notices a telltale flaw in their act.

Von Hammersmark must convince Lt Raine that she had not been responsible for the basement disaster; further she has information that the venue of the premier has been moved from the Ritz to a smaller cinema and that Hitler will also be attending. The American terrorist saboteurs - Aldo, Omar Ulmer (Omar Doom), and Donny, wearing tuxes and dynamite strapped to their ankles - accompany her, posing as Italian filmmakers, with the assumption that the Germans cannot distinguish a genuine Italian accent from a phony one.

They know nothing of Emmanuelle's plan; as she applies makeup like war paint, she's unaware of theirs. In possession of Cinderella's shoe and an autographed napkin, Col Landa takes Bridget aside, cognizant of a pumpkin with rats in his midst. "You need all four to end the war," Col Landa negotiates with Lt Aldo "the Apache" Raine and Pfc Smithson "Little Man" Utivich (B.J. Novak): "If you want to end the war tonight, you have to make a deal."

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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