Academy Award-winning director Quentin Tarantino's World War II epic, Inglourious Basterds, starring Brad Pitt. In the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema. Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish American soldiers to perform swift, shocking acts of retribution. Later known to their enemy as "the basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquis, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own....--©Official Site.
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Reviews
Channel 4 Film
Richard Luck
"But there are almost too many highspots to point up. Take the opening sequence in which Waltz's Hans Lander interrogates a dairy farmer he believes guilty of harbouring Jews. Sure, the whole thing's a steal from The Good, The Bad And The Ugly, but the pacing, tension and dialogue are of a standard previously unseen in Tarantino's cinema. The ageing enfant terrible might not have grown up but he's certainly grown."
07/10/2009
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Total Film
Matthew Leyland
"“This ain’t your daddy’s WW2 flick,” reckons Tarantino. Too right: this exploitation epic is a unique beast that molests history, wrong-foots expectations and royally entertains. The movies’ coolest Basterd is back on his game."
28/07/2009
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Variety
Todd McCarthy
"Quentin Tarantino's long-gestating war saga invests a long-simmering revenge plot with reworkings of innumerable genre conventions, but only fully finds its tonal footing about halfway through, after which it's off to the races. By turns surprising, nutty, windy, audacious and a bit caught up in its own cleverness, the picture is a completely distinctive piece of American pop art with a strong Euro flavor that's new for the director."
20/05/2009
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The Times
James Christopher
"What’s difficult to square is the occasional Springtime for Hitler scenes, featuring an apoplectic Führer, with the darker corners of the film. The almost casual savagery perpetrated by Pitt and his German rival can occasionally look unnervingly out of place next to the lighter Mel Brooks-style moments. That said, this is a fairytale of unusual and thoughtful daring. A return, at last, by Tarantino to his combustible and operatic best."
21/05/2009
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The Observer
Philip French
"The result, involving some slack and highly ingenious plotting, features a beautiful German movie star working as a double agent and a German version of Audie Murphy, and invokes The Dirty Dozen, To Be or Not to Be, The Last Metro and a dozen movies set in cinemas. The grand central conceit is that those who worship and glorify movies but are unworthy of them (eg Goebbels) will die in a cinema. The violence will spread from the screen into the auditorium and the fuel to burn them or ignite their pyres will be provided by the inflammable material of film itself. The notion is as intoxicating as it is demented."
23/08/2009
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The Scotsman
Alistair Harkness
"it's a genre-defying, artistically daring, always entertaining Second World War movie full of period pop-culture references, anachronistic soundtrack choices and a refreshingly honest rejection of the need for historical veracity. In other words: it's pure Tarantino, predictable only in its unpredictability."
21/08/2009
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Empire Magazine
Chris Hewitt
"With a confidence typical of its director, the last line of Inglourious Basterds is, “This might just be my masterpiece.” While that may not be true, this is an often dazzling movie that sees QT back on exhilarating form."
07/10/2009
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The Independent on Sunday
Jonathan Romney
"The violence is genuinely grisly: it’s not so much the sight of the scalpings as the sound effects that makes you wince. But you can’t say it’s gratuitous: think of the film as a hybrid between ’Allo ’Allo! and Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron, and you know what to expect. For all its prolix shapelessness, Inglourious Basterds displays a perversely coherent vision."
23/08/2009
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The Mirror
Mark Adams
"The subtitle of this film is "Once Upon a Time in World War II" - and real history plays only a minor part in Tarantino's dramatic and at times fantastical version. But what the hell - this entertaining explosion of a film is like nothing you'll have seen before. And it's all the better for it."
16/08/2009
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The New York Times
Manhola Dargis
"Mr. Tarantino is really only serious about his own films, not history. In that sense “Inglourious Basterds,” which takes its title if not its misspellings from an Italian flick in “The Dirty Dozen” vein, is simply another testament to his movie love. The problem is that by making the star attraction of his latest film a most delightful Nazi, one whose smooth talk is as lovingly presented as his murderous violence, Mr. Tarantino has polluted that love."
21/08/2009
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The Independent
Anthony Quinn
"here is much to enjoy in Inglourious Basterds, from the performances of Christoph Waltz and Michael Fassbender to the wonderful confidence of those long talky scenes. Even with its propensity for quoting other films it is full of original touches and quirks. What it lacks is the texture of felt life; to put it another way, you don't believe a word of it."
21/08/2009
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The New Statesman
Ryan Gilbey
"In the spirit of the misspelled title of Quentin Tarantino's new movie, let me say that Inglourious Basterds represents a bog improvement for this variable film-mucker. It may even be considered a return to farm following his last picture, Death Proof, which was frunkly a load of crop."
20/08/2009
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The Financial Times
Nigel Andrews
"After two and a half hours, we feel dizzied by the dance we have done ourselves: whirled around the floor of a story that goes absolutely nowhere, contains no human verities, has no significant heft as historical drama, yet still proves, now and then, an entertaining piece of Pop Disco Art from the cinema’s most talented tease."
19/08/2009
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The Sunday Times
Cosmos Landesman
"The trouble with the film is that it has no clear voice: it’s not strong enough to be a gripping war drama, which I think it wants to be, or funny enough to be an enjoyable spoof. Tarantino’s idea of a group of Nazi-killing Jews is rich in comic possibility. The team are led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a Southerner with a simple delight in killing Germans. But if you’re expecting some kind of Mel Brooks/Woody Allen riff on the problems and anxieties of being a Jewish avenger, you will be disappointed."
23/08/2009
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The New Yorker
David Denby
"The film is skillfully made, but it’s too silly to be enjoyed, even as a joke. Tarantino may think that he is doing Jews a favor by launching this revenge fantasy (in the burning theatre, working-class Jewish boys get to pump Hitler and Göring full of lead), but somehow I doubt that the gesture will be appreciated."
24/08/2009
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The Los Angeles Times
Kenneth Turan
"For one of the curious things about "Basterds," the above list of violent acts notwithstanding, is that it is simultaneously bloody and bloodless. Clocking in at 2 hours and 32 minutes, it is unforgivably leisurely, almost glacial, a film that loses its way in the thickets of alternative history and manages to be violent without the start-to-finish energy that violence on screen usually guarantees."
21/08/2009
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The Daily Mail
Chris Tookey
"At 46, Tarantino should be in his prime, but emotionally he's locked in perpetual adolescence, content to show off his film knowledge, entertain like-minded geeks and pander to the worst instincts of bloodthirsty youth."
21/08/2009
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The Daily Telegraph
Sukhdev Sandhu
"Tarantino, one of the most exceptional choreographers of blood-ballet working today, should have wielded a cleaver to whole sections of this 154-minute non-epic. There is far too much yakking, some of it thickly accented and hard to follow, most of it without the rhythmic zing of his best work. The violence – Brad Pitt as one of the Basterds wiggling his finger inside Diana Kruger’s wounded leg – comes as a relief."
20/05/2009
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Time Out
Dave Calhoun
"‘Subtle’ is not a word in Tarantino's lexicon. At the film’s heart is a fatal attempt to conflate fact with fiction and a celebration of vengeance that’s misplaced and embarrassing. Loyal fans expecting a familiar patchwork of Tarantino tics and quirks – ‘Pulp History’ or ‘Kill Hitler’ – might not be disappointed. Those expecting anything approaching progress, cinematically or ideologically, probably will be."
20/08/2009
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The Times
Wendy Ide
"...the final impression of the movie — that it’s crass, juvenile and profoundly distasteful — overrides its more enjoyable moments. "
21/08/2009
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The Guardian
Peter Bradshaw
"Having seen it once in Cannes earlier this year, and again for its UK release I was struck afresh by how exasperatingly awful and transcendentally disappointing it is: a colossal, complacent, long-winded dud, a gigantic two-and-a-half-hour anti-climax, like a Quentin Tarantino film in form and mannerism but with the crucial element of genius mysteriously amputated."
19/08/2009
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