Inglorious Basterds
During the German occupation of France in WW2, Shosanna Dreyfus witnesses how Nazi Colonel and Jew Hunter Hans Landa murders her family. She barely manages to escape but manages to pick up her life again when she finds refuge at a small cinema in Paris. Years later she’s operating the movie theater when German war hero and actor Fredrick Zoller gets interested in her and requests her theater to be used for the premiere of his latest movie.
Meanwhile, the US have sent a bunch of Jewish-American troops under the lead of Lt. Aldo Raine to France to terrorise the German forces by going guerilla and capturing Germans scalps. When the “Basterds” hear of the movie premiere which will host several high-ranking German officers, they set up a plan to turn the event in a major slaughter.
Sound and Vision:
Looking for a perfect transfer? You got it! Universal knows how to technically deliver the Blu-ray experience and they’re almost bragging with their crafts in this release. The level of detail, depth, contrast, colors, … it all looks amazing.
The same goes for the soundtrack where your surround system gets used in optimal ways to make you hear every small detail, even when there’s plenty of shooting going around. Dialogues are crystal clear, bullets fly around your head and the music is just pounding from your speakers while the subwoofer gives it the necessary bass as support. Excellent!
Extras:
- Nation’s Pride
- Making Of Nation’s Pride
- Roundtable with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Elvis Mitchell
- The original Inglorious Bastards
- Quentin Tarantino’s Camera angel
- Extended and Alternate Scenes
- Poster Gallery
A really nice collection of extras that should satisfy most people eventhough the amount of interactive stuff is a bit thin. Not that we mind.
Conclusion:
I’ve read plenty of reviews on Inglorious Basterds and have even heard and seen some on radio and television. The general concensus seems to be that it’s a fantastic movie and one of the best by Tarantino yet. Did these people see the same movie I did?
It all starts pretty decently though. The first chapter may last long, but it’s a typical Tarantino piece where dialogue seems to continue forever without seemingly going nowhere until suddenly action hits you in the face. Unfortunately, that’s just about where your patience runs thin. Hoping to get some more action, you start looking at chapter two where we get to see Brad Pitt as a scalp-hunting American-Jewish lieutenant who’s mission is to scare the hell out of the Germans. Nice idea and a couple of good jokes but things take way too long and you’re constantly wondering when something is going to happen.
Onto part three: the different storylines come together in a massive finale where bullets fly around as if they were mosquitos in the rain forest. Unfortunately, by then you’ve lost interest and are just hoping for a quick ending to stop your hurting.
The movie lasts 153 minutes and in the extras there’s some extended and altered scenes even. Maybe for once some “deleted” scenes would have helped. It would have made the movie shorter, the pace a bit better and probably would have kept us from falling asleep.
After Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, Tarantino directed Jackie Brown which was quite a disappointment when compared to his previous work. However, after watching it again you could see there was still some brilliance present and the first part of Kill Bill brought back that feeling that Tarantino was back on track. Unfortunately, Death Proof and now Inglorious Basterds show that the director who brought us a couple of masterpieces seems to have completely lost it. He constantly applies his same tricks and stretches every second, not until it becomes a minute but until it becomes an hour. And that leaves too little interesting content to keep someone interested for the full length of this film.
All in all: this Blu-ray is a great example of how a good transfer should be done, but unfortunately what’s on the disc is total crap that makes you lose 153 minutes of your life. And that’s without counting the extras
5.0