I fukking loved this movie. Inglourious Bastads is an unrestrained and blood-spattered revisionist history film that will undoubtedly end up as one of the Top Three of the Year on my coveted list of 2009’s best. Kill Bill is still my favorite Tarantino film, and I am not in the “Pulp Fiction is his best work” camp. Before Kill Bill I thought that Jackie Brown was his best, but Inglourious Bastads boots Jackie Brown out of second place, and then keeps booting it, and booting it, and then it kills it with a bat to the cranium.
The very best thing in the film is actor Christophe Waltz, playing Col. Hans Landa, a Secret Service “Jew Hunter.” The performance is beyond expectations, even for a Tarantino villain - Waltz is even playing a stronger character than David Carradine’s Bill, whose snake-like coolness couldn’t come close to the cheery sociopath glory of Waltz’s Landa - an Oscar-worthy performance times a thousand. Although the trailer paints Brad Pitt as the film’s star, his performance is almost John Waters campy, and it’s high-falutin’ goofiness will almost certainly absolve him from his award-receiving duties next year.
The other great performance of this film belongs to Melanie Laurent, who plays a Jewish woman hiding out in France after her family is murdered in cold blood years earlier. She aims to get even, and her screaming and bloody revenge rivals Beatrix Kiddo’s.
I will be seeing Inglourious Basta*ds several times on the big screen. If you are one of those types that doesn’t like flagrant violence, then this film is not for you. Also, if you can’t sit still for a couple hours without texting someone, then please don’t go to this movie or any other movie for that matter, idiot.