The Rookies

Bloody brilliant?

The Rookies isn’t just a sports blog. For reviews you can maybe use, check The Rec Room. Also, please welcome Brian Mechanick to the Rookies roster.

LittleWaynesBleedingHead: So, the movie up for discussion today is Inglourious Basterds. I saw it over the weekend and loved it. There were a bunch of great performances, memorable characters, typical Tarantino-style dialogue and, of course, plenty of violence. My one complaint was that there was too little focus on the exploits of the Basterds.

Brian: Agree with you there.

LWBH: While the secondary (or one could argue primary) storyline was compelling, most people showed up to see Brad Pitt’s band of soldiers kill Nazis.

Brian: While I appreciated the traditional Tarantino diverging storylines, the Basterds were a bit underused. I felt the film really could’ve used some insight into them.

LWBH: We hear tales of why they are feared by the Germans and get one or two anecdotes, but for the most part the trailers did the best job letting the audience know just exactly how big of badasses these guys are supposed to be. For the Basterds, one or two of their motivations are revealed. But other than that it seems to be “They’re Jewish, so they hate Nazis.”

Brian: While some more fighting would have been appreciated, I can respect Tarantino’s intentions. He wasn’t trying to make The Dirty Dozen; he was trying to make a film rich in drama and tension.

LWBH: This is true, but I think further motivation would be needed to join such a dangerous outfit deep in occupied territory. A couple more skirmishes with Nazis would have been nice, but the stories were far deeper than what just a shoot ‘em up could have revealed. I do agree that the plot was revealed nicely.

Brian: I think we can agree that the star of the film was Christopher Waltz, who played the excellent Col. Hans Landa.

LWBH: Landa was superb. The character was phenomonal, as was Waltz’s performance. You come for Brad Pitt, you stay for Col. Landa.

Brian: An extraordinary performance: Smooth and charming, yet despicable at the same time.

LWBH And it was pulled off perfectly. The balance you mentioned is tough, but right from the first scene he establishes it and keeps it up.

Brian: That opening scene, along with the tavern scene, were the two scenes that defined the movie in my eyes. In the opening scene, you begin to understand the genius that is Landa, a man who in war becomes a machine meant to perform a task. Which he does, extremely well.

LWBH: That’s a great way to describe Landa. He just goes about his job with mechanical precision. And that sort of comes back to the earlier point: This movie really isn’t about the Basterds. Neither of those scenes feature the “Nazi killing rampage” from the trailers. One doesn’t even have a single Basterd in it. But they are still excellent.

Brian: To me, the best scene of the movie is in the tavern, where the tension is on full blast from the opening.

LWBH: Well, we can’t give too much away here, but I agree that scene is phenomonally tense. The ending also, for me, was drenched in drama. Part of that, I think, was not knowing if the plot was going to stick to historical accuracy regarding certain parties’ lives, or if it was revisionist.

Brian: I will disagree with you there: I found the ending a tad anticlimactic.

LWBH: That’s another thing I thought as I watched it the first time—some poeple will love the end, some people will be disappointed with it.

Brian: But I think that’s a staple of Tarantino’s film making. Tarantino’s baseline intensity is so high throughout his films that it’s hard to have anything eclipse it in the end.

LWBH: The tavern scene’s tension wasn’t going to be topped.

Brian: Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction, True Romance, Kill Bill: All great films, but as in Inglourious Basterds, they are films best defined by their scenes, not their plots.

LWBH: The parts are greater than the sum, but I still would fully recommend the film. It gets four stars out of five from me.

Brian: I would also give it four of five stars. It contains some of Tarantino’s best writing of his career. But the inability to have both the epic scenes and the fully gripping story is what keeps Inglorious Basterds from being as good as Pulp Fiction. It is still an oustanding film though, and I recommend it highly.