About 7-8 years ago, a friend told me that Quentin Taratino had ambitions to do a war movie, particularly about World War II. I like war films a lot and to have a notion that Tarantino would be directing one, I couldn’t dream of a better scenario. Tarantino would easily make my top 5 list of greatest directors of all-time and he certainly has earned that mark with others as well. Since time started to pass after hearing the news of the war film, I started to forget and even wondered if it ever was coming out. During that time, Tarantino has worked on other projects and has succeeded well with the Kill Bills, guest directing on Sin City, a couple of episodes of “CSI” and Death Proof from Grindhouse. Finally, after a long wait, Tarantino has finished his war movie called Inglourious Basterds and this is easily one of the most anticipated movies for me personally and I’m sure for a lot of other people as well. There is an Italian war movie called Inglorious Bastards from 1978, but it’s not related to the current one.
Some people never move on from tee ball.
Brad Pitt (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button) stars as Lieutenant Aldo Raine, an officer in charge of recruiting eight Jewish-American soldiers to go undercover behind enemy lines in German-occupied France. Their main orders are to “kill Nazis” and for each soldier to get “100 Nazi scalps.” One of the soldiers, Donny Donowitz, will be played by Eli Roth (director of Hostel). This will be one of his biggest acting performances, as he has only done small cameos in the past. The other part of the story will focus on a young Jewish girl named Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent, Paris). She is bent on revenge since the Nazis killed her family and is looking for Secret Service colonel Standartenfuhrer Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz, Ordinary Decent Criminal) aka “The Jew Hunter,” the man responsible for her families’ death. With the combination of Shosanna’s personal vendetta and the American’s German hunting, the Nazi’s world is about to be turned upside down.
Other actors appearing in the film will be Diane Kruger (National Treasure), Samuel L. Jackson (Snakes on a Plane) and Mike Myers (The Love Guru). Tarantino, who wrote and directed the film, developed the story into five main chapters chronicling different perspectives and also heavily barrowing themes from spaghetti westerns. Tarantino once said the spaghetti western epic, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, was the best-directed movie he has ever seen, so expect major influences from that.
If you were a Nazi, where would this rank on the "Worst Things to Wake Up To" list?
I can’t wait to see to this and I’m hoping Tarantino continues his colossal streak of great movies since he hasn’t had a bad one yet (his segment from Four Rooms doesn’t count). Since Tarantino’s last movie, Death Proof, didn’t do so hot in the box office, I’m not sure how this will turn out with audiences, but I’m hoping it will be huge.
Inglourious Basterds opens August 21st.
