Plot: What’s it about?
Rarely are there “movie movies” made these days. Too often do studios want all of their films to fit into a nicely defined genre, such as horror, sci-fi, or the often-used drama. What about the movies that do away with the labels and stereotypes and just unfold naturally, mixing in action if action is needed, suspense if suspense is needed, or everything in between?
That?s what Quentin Tarantino does with Inglourious Basterds. To define this movie as simply a drama or comedy, the two broadest genres out there, is to mistakenly define a film that was one of the biggest surprises to me in 2009. After hearing about its lukewarm reaction in Cannes and how Tarantino was busy editing it after that festival ended, I wasn’t expecting too much. For that, I am fortunate, because everyone loves being pleasantly surprised, right?
Inglourious Basterds, written and directed by Tarantino, follows a few different storylines as they lead up to the grand and bloody finale in a French movie theater. On one hand we have Lt. Aldo Raine, hilariously played by Brad Pitt, and his small army of Jewish-American soldiers as they kill Nazis across eastern Europe, one scalp at a time. At other times we follow a young Jewish woman, Shoshanna, as she escapes the brutal murdering of her family and hides under the identity of a French theater owner.
Moving between these, and other, stories is Col. Hans Landa, also known as “The Jew Hunter”. Christoph Waltz plays the creepy and, at times, charming villain who even the audience wants to trust at times. You never should, though. Whereas many other villains would use force, Landa verbally convinces a farmer early on in the film to admit where he is hiding a family of Jews. Through it all, Hans Landa is pleasant. He smiles. He even jokes. Like a flick of a switch, however, he becomes absolutely ruthless and you quickly learn why he got his nickname.
Inglourious Basterds does not rush through itself. It takes its time, something I value in movies today. It?s not an often occurrence to see a single scene play out for longer than ten minutes, but Tarantino provides the suspense to do so. In the last line of the film, one character looks straight into the camera and declares some “art” they are working on as their masterpiece. This is, in turn, Tarantino speaking directly to us. I see plenty of heads nodding in agreement.
Video: How does it look?
“Inglorious Basterds” comes to Blu-ray sporting a very nice-looking 2.40:1 AVC HD transfer. The film uses mostly every color under the sun and different scenes reflect the difference in colors used. Detail is sharp and I’m hard-pressed to find much anything wrong here. Contrast is right on the mark and black levels are on the money as well. This is a new to Blu-ray film and it delivers and exceeds everything that we’ve come to expect from “big budget” films. For the fans of “Inglorious Basterds”, this is as near perfect as it gets.
Audio: How does it sound?
Not to be outdone, the DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack is something that really needs to be heard to be appreciated. Yes, there are somewhat typical loud crashes that your speakers will no doubt embrace but the little things are what stood out to me. For those that haven’t seen the film, a majority of it is in German and French with English subtitles, so to say the movie is dialogue-driven is an understatement, in any language. While this uncompressed soundtrack is, at times, subdued, it’s still worthy of the score it deserves.
Supplements: What are the extras?
There are a good number of special features, some Hi-Def and others not. There are the deleted scenes, as well as certain scenes from the feature extended. A roundtable discussion with Tarantino and Brad Pitt is also a Hi-Def feature, as well as “The Making of Nation’s Pride”, focusing on the “film within a film” that you can see in the final chapter of the movie. You can watch the full Nation?s Pride itself as a standard feature, among others.
