This alternate history account of WWII starts in 1941 with a
French farmer PERRIER LAPADITE
watching with trepidation an approaching vehicle. His concern is justified. The
visitor is HANS LANDA, a Nazi who equates murdering Jews with killing rats. Landa orders Lapadite to reveal the location
of a Jewish family, the Dreyfus's.
Lapadite at first says the family escaped the country, but when Landa
threatens to take his daughters to be sex slaves for the Nazis, Lapadite gives
up and points to the floor. The Jews are hiding in the crawlspace. Landa's
soldiers pepper the floor with bullets, killing everyone in the Dreyfus family
except for one daughter, Shoshanna, who manages to run away. Landa watches her leave
and laughs.
Switch to 1944, when American Lieutenant ALDO RAINE (Brad
Pitt) recruits eight Jewish soldiers, the Inglorious Basterds, for a mission
behind enemy lines. They ambush a German
squad, and, when the squad's sergeant refuses to give them information, one of
Raine's men, DONNY DONOWITZ, a big guy nicknamed 'the bear Jew,' beats the sergeant
to death with a baseball bat. Only one of the Germans survives the ambush.
Raine carves a swastika into his forehead both to scar him forever and also to
warn Hitler that Raine's men mean business.
Shoshanna, using a pseudonym, now runs a movie theater in Paris. She learns that
Goebbels, Hitler and other high level Nazis will be attending her cinema to see
a propaganda film, and, with her lover, concocts a plan. At the same time, the Basterds also plan at
attack on the cinema...
No spoilers.
The plot is a lot more complicated than the details above,
but it's all laid out in a clear fashion that's easy to follow. Seeing Jews
beat the crap out of Nazis is a lot of fun, and the ending, though just alternate
history, is exquisitely satisfying.
One plot flaw is that Raine, the leader of the Jewish band,
himself is apparently not Jewish. Actor Brad Pitt certainly doesn't make a
convincing Jew (he's not Jewish in real life). But this is not major.
All in all, this is a riveting and exciting movie that will
often get your pulse up to a sprint. I
give it +++++.
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