Inglourious Basterds (2009) *****

I must admit before I get started- I wasn't the biggest fan of Inglourious Basterds the first time I saw it. It was still a very good movie, but I felt that some of the dialogue went much too long even for a Tarantino movie. I was disappointed as hell. So I revisited the movie a few days later and found that on a second viewing the dialogue flows a lot better than in my original viewing. So let this be a lesson to you- watch it twice, especially if war films are not your forte.

Inglourious Basterds is a World War II saga about a group of Jewish Allied Soldiers that act as an assassination squad, killing and scalping every German they come in contact with, owing Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) one hundred Nazi scalps. The film centers on their exploits to eliminate the entire German high command and end the war once and for all.

Now before you go into this film thinking it's Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day, please remember that this isn't an action filled movie. There's a ton of dialogue that makes this film more of an espionage flick than an action one. But Tarantino is so good at crafting this film that you don't notice as the Basterds develop a plan for the ultimate execution.

The film owes a lot to the classic World War II films that preceded it, mainly the Dirty Dozen, Kelly's Heroes, Where Eagles Dare, and the original Inglorious Bastards. These films take the stance of a group of outcasts leading the way to winning the war against unthinkable odds. Tarantino draws on the basic storyline of these films and updates them in his own unique way of telling a story. Just as he did with the Kill Bill films, he merges several genres and eras of film making into one movie and it works yet again.

Quentin Tarrantino is the world's biggest film student. He's absorbed every film he's ever seen and uses them whenever he writes or directs a film, giving us a history lesson in the cinema of the 1960's and '70's. Just as with his other films, Inglourious Basterds is another unique film that doesn't redefine a genre because it doesn't belong to any one genre. With Tarantino, every film is a unique experience that you're not going to get anywhere else.