Ultra-Short Inglorious Bastards Movie Review

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I did not like it. The trailer makes the film out to be about Nazi hunting but the “Bastards” seem less interested in finding Nazis than they are in mutilating any German solider they can find.

Steve Johnson

Founder and Dictator-In-Chief of TFB. A passionate gun owner, a shooting enthusiast and totally tacti-uncool. Favorite first date location: any gun range. Steve can be contacted here.

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  • http://Www.predatorwild.com Heath

    Thanks. I refuse to watch any Pitt movie after the rash of politics he’s been involved in lately. Why do actors have to get involved in politics or think we care about their political opinion?!?!?!

    • http://www.thefirearmblog.com Steve

      Heath, it comes down to narcissism. They are narcissists.

  • Eddy A

    Bah, the movie was great. Tarantino’s best movie so far. As you say, you were just predisposed to the idea that the movie was going to be a murderfest. The dialogue makes the movie and fantastic dialogue it is.

    • http://www.thefirearmblog.com Steve

      Eddy, no, I said the opposite. I went to see war movie and instead I saw a sadistic murderfest. Not my kind of thing. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. I admit there was some clever plot devices in the movie.

  • montag

    I’m a die-hard Tarantino fan, so I was pretty psyched going into the theater. When I left, the most feeling I could sum up about the movie was ‘meh’. It’s got some great bits, don’t get me wrong – the acting and the dialog, at times, are just amazing. But things draaaaag out, and between trying to be funny and trying to be serious, it fails at both.

    It’s hard to cheer for the heroes, because their actions make them just as bad as those they torment. The film takes itself far, far too seriously, and that’s really what ruins it.

    I don’t mind the fairy-tale style, I don’t mind the hyperactive violence. The acting, dialog and cinematography are amazing. But when put together, someone forgot how to edit a film for time and pacing, and found it all so amazing they couldn’t cut a second more.

    It’s disjointed, lengthy to the point of nausea, and amoral to the point of making the heroes no different from the villains. I wanted to like it, but I can’t.

  • Nick

    You have to keep in mind there were huge jumps in time through the story, and with good reason.

    I don’t think you can fairly say they’re “less interested in finding Nazis than they are in mutilating any German solider they can find”, since I believe at one point the film jumps what… two, three years?

    Would you really have enjoyed it if it were a film that followed the group around for four years worth of story, watching them hunt down groups of Germans? That’d get awfully repetitive, very quickly.

    At any rate, i thought it was quite good.

  • Tango_Delta

    Well, the whole point of the “basterds” was to intimidate and scare the German soldiers so when the allies invaded they would have a psychological advantage over the Germans according to Aldo the Apache’s monologue in the beginning.

    I think you have to accept that it’s a Tarantino film so inherently ridiculous and over the top, you just have to be willing to play along. The ending is freaking awesome I don’t see how that can be denied and the Hans Landa the Jew Hunter is an amazing actor.

    I really enjoyed it, the scenes were so tense and the movie was really well cast. With the exception of Brad Pitt, they should have picked some more grizzly even though the character of Aldo is awesome.

  • Eddy A

    Yeah Steve, I’m with you on those plot devices. I wasn’t expecting so many ‘shifts’ in the movie but they were well played and entertaining.

  • Pete

    Hollywood has a “thing” with Germans and Nazis…

    Silly movie, and disrespectful to both sides. Hollywood continues in its downward path and i hope it crashes one day.

    And its 2009…people still beleive the Official WW2 Story ™ of the cartoon-like “absolute good vs absolute evil”?!?

  • XxleoxX

    heath actors have the right to comment on their political views just like we do,there is nothing wrong

  • Wilbur

    Guys,

    Remember the speech about rats early in the movie? How people don like them even though the ‘only’ thing they did was spread plague and that was ‘ages ago’, ‘but squirrels are rodents too’? That’s what the movie is about – hate of of one group and love of another, irrationally (or at least somehwat irrationally, not saying I love Nazis). While the Americans in the movie are who we think of as heroes they are intentionally vile and unlikeable. Further more, the film juxtaposes Nazis cheering for one of theirs killing Americans by the hundreds, in a movie theater, with us, as moments later we are cheering for the Americans killing Nazis by the hundreds. While for the most part I think what he’s trying to say in the movie is hyperbole, he has some interesting and uncomfortable things to make us think about.

    But you may just not like Tarantino, which is of course fine. I always have, but I really enjoyed this movie in particular.

  • Matt Groom

    Hollywood LOVES Nazis. Loves them. They love everything about Hitler and the Third Reich. Why do you think they make so many movies about them? You don’t see so many fawning portrayals of the Imperial Japanese, do you? They love their airplanes, their motorcycles, their tanks, their snazzy uniforms, their sharp discipline, their (fake) German accents, they love everything about National Socialism. But what they love most of all, is the propaganda value of having something that is perceived as being more evil than communism as a punching bag.

    “Well, I may be a Marxist, but at least I’m not a Fascist!” In most cases, Fascism would be a big step up. Communism killed millions more innocent people than Fascism in the 20th century. Very slightly to the Left of Fascism is National Socialism, and to the left of that is Communism and Theocracy, both of which are about as Left wing as they come.

    Anyway, Tarantino has failed in making a movie that’s about triumphing over evil, as America did in WWII, because of the moral relativism of the way this film is presented. The horrifically gruesome way in which the Nazis are tortured is a decidedly anti-western and anti-American statement. Americans do not, did not, and traditionally would not perform such acts on even their worst enemies, but the left doesn’t seem to think so. The left thinks that there are American soldiers in Iraq and Cuba right now who are torturing and mutilating innocent Muslims, just because they’re Muslims. I’m not so naive as to believe that there’s never been a horrific crime committed by an American overseas, but as a culture, we frown on it. The Nazis and the Japanese did not, and neither does most of the Islamic world today, and that’s the difference.

    One of the things people fail to recognize about Tarantino is that he isn’t famous for making movies that piss off Progressives, he’s famous for making movies that piss off people who think it’s inappropriate to cut a cop’s ear off, just for fun. Where I come from, we call those people “Americans”. While some of his movies have great dialog, his films are as juvenile as a Bill Maher diatribe. The moral relativism of this film are why if falls flat, not its cinematography, or its lighting, or its action sequences, or even its editing (which is just horrible, as it was in Kill Bill). It’s this films spirit which is appalling. Americans are just as bad as Nazis? Jewish suicide bombers? Bizarro World for sure.

    Did you see “The Miracle at St. Anna”? Worst war movie ever. No miracle, no character, no moral, no direction, just two and a half hours of nothingness. “Oh poor me! I’m Black! I got it worse than the Jews!” As far as film value goes, Basterds was a dramatically better film in every way, but it suffered from the same lack of morals as that piece of crap. “St. Anna” sucked because the tone of the movie was such that the Americans were just as evil as the Nazis. The only non-racists in the whole film were a slutty (but hot!) Italian peasant girl and an SS Colonel?! WTF?!! “Defend yourself?!!!” Are you kidding me?

    If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just trust me when I say you shouldn’t watch that movie. Basterds was a big step up, and Basterds was stupid.

  • Jake

    Thanks. I refuse to watch any Pitt movie after the rash of politics he’s been involved in lately. Why do actors have to get involved in politics or think we care about their political opinion?!?!?!
    —-
    Other than its his right, I think its pretty funny that one would feel the need to share one’s political opinion that others should not become involved in politics because no one cares about their political opinion. In order to agree with you wouldn’t we not have to care that this is your personal opinion?

  • http://www.predatorwild.com Heath

    Jake, you don’t have to agree with me, or you can. Obviously my comments have less then no weight with the man and won’t influence his comments in the future. I am merely voicing my own opinion and not trying to change your opinion or that of the other Blog’ers here.

  • Retired LTC

    I just saw this movie last night and I was disgusted by how American soldiers were portrayed. I wonder what Tarantino’s politics are, because it seemed to me he was trying to say that Bush’s torture policy was a-okay because we have always done that sort of thing. Sorry, but the US didn’t allow or condone torture during WWII, or any time prior to the last administration. Not to say it never happened, but never as a matter of policy and always punished when discovered. There really are (or were) good and bad guys in the world, and it is gross revisionism to portray the Allies as no better than the Nazis.

  • Jean Moulin

    While unfortunately not historically accurate, and the heroine did make a tactical error at the end (don’t turn him over, double tap him) it was a GREAT movie.

    and what is this talk about “torturing” nazis? they should have been PROUD to have a swastika carved onto their foreheads so they could display their sympathies until they died.

    a great movie with a happy ending.

    any movie that ends with lots of dead germans has a happy ending :-}

    “we ain’t in the prisoner takin’ business”

  • Mando

    Some of you guys have strong opinions that cloud your thinking. Tarantino sets the stage by making the audience hate the evil Nazis, then portrays the Americans as good soldiers helping the Jews and Aldo marking a shwastica on the forehead is awesome, since thT Nazi can run but can’t hide. It’s just an interpretation of how wwII could have gone. And also LTC needs to understand that there was torture and there was illegal shots in wwII but that needed to happen, war is war and USA should never apologize.