Fridae

Stylish and outrageous, absurd yet devilishly entertaining, Quentin Tarantino’s new film Inglourious Basterds is a cinematic treat like no other. Borrowing (or stealing) from dozens of other war films, it combines camp, comedy, gore, drama and history to concoct something that’s quite bold and thrilling. Imagine a war movie directed by an MTV-loving teenager and starring some mighty fine actors, and you’ll get a better picture of how this plays.

Contrary to the marketing campaign that shows off Brad Pitt as the lead actor, the films actually revolves around several main characters. Brad leads a band of American Jewish soldiers who are out to kill as many Nazis as possible. Then there’s Christoph Waltz as a cold-blooded Nazi colonel, Daniel Bruhl as a Nazi war hero, Diane Kruger as a German star and undercover agent, and Melanie Laurent as a Jewish woman who escapes Nazi capture to run a cinema in Paris. 

All these characters come together in a wild and exhilarating climax that could only come from Tarantino fervid and twisted imagination.

Already a box-office hit in the US, Inglourious Basterds has been criticized for the title’s deliberately bad spelling and blatant disregard of historical facts. But Tarantino has always been a iconoclast: His World War II movie isn’t a dramatic interpretation of history so much as a glorious B-movie that uses the war as a backdrop for his usual themes: man’s greed, violence and stupidity. 

You could call Tarantino an “inglorious basterd” for turning a serious topic such as the Holocaust into one wacky and irreverent movie. But you couldn’t deny that Inglourious Basterds is a brilliant piece of entertainment. It’s the must-watch of September.