Spellcheck Now Hates Me: A Review of Inglourious Basterds

This review contains no spoilers. For a better, but spoiler-y, review, go here.

Ah, Inglourious Basterds. It has the three things I love most in a movie:

1) Moral ambiguity

2 )Nazis being killed

3 )Actors that have also been in Marvel movies

Inglourious Basterds is a Quentin Tarantino film narrated by Samuel L. Jackson that recounts the exploits of various (fictional) soldiers and civilians during WWII. In typical Tarantino fashion, the movies is told in multiple parts. The first part, titled “once upon a time in Nazi-occupied France,” introduces both Shosanna Dreyfus; a French-Jewish girl hiding with her family in the basement of a farmer’s home, and Colonel Hans Landa; also known by the moniker of “the Jew hunter,” Landa is the Nazi officer who orders Shosanna’s family to be shot through the floor of the house. Shosanna escapes, and the movie changes to part two, titled “the Inglouriuos Basterds.” 

In the second part, we are introduced to the eponymous Basterds, a group of Jewish-American soldiers intent on killing as many Nazis as possible. The group, led by Lieutenant Raine, consists of Donny Donowitz, Hugo Stiglitz, Wilhelm Wicki, Omar Ulmer, Smithson Utvich, Gerold Hirschberg, Andy Kagan, Michael Zimmerman, and the aforementioned Aldo Raine. Of those nine, only Raine, Donowitz, Stiglitz, and Utvich have important roles in the movie. This is not to say that the others do not have important roles in the plot itself, just that they are given very little screen time in the movie.

Part three returns the viewer to Shosanna Dreyfus, now called Emmanuelle Mimieux, who now owns a movie theater in Paris. When Nazi soldier Fredrick Zoller informs her that an important movie premier will now be held at her theater, attended by many high-ranking Nazis, Shosanna and her employee Marcel generate a plan to assassinate those in attendance of the premier.

As shown in part four, the Basterds are at the same time hatching their own plan to kill the Nazis. With the help of Bridget von Hammersmark, a German actress/spy for England, and Lt. Archie Hicox, a British soldier, the Basterds plan to plant explosives at the movie premier.To reveal the rest of part four, or any of part five, would spoil the ending for any readers that have not yet seen the movie.From here, we move into the analysis portion of the review.

Earlier, I described this movie as having moral ambiguity, and here I will explain this further. While some characters are unambiguously good, like Hicox, or completely evil, like Landa, other characters, such as Shosanna, or the Basterds themselves, fall less clearly on one side of the moral spectrum.

Shosanna Dreyfus, arguably the protagonist of the movie, commits several crimes during her quest to kill Hans Landa, including arson, manslaughter, and mass-murder. Her actions also leave us with the question of whether it is ever really morally justifiable to kill someone, no matter what crimes they’ve committed.

The Basterds, while immensely entertaining, mow down a sequence of Nazis with no regard for whether or not the soldier in question willingly participated in the war. Some would say the Nazis had it coming, regardless of their willingness, or lack-thereof, while others would disagree. The movie depicts one of the Nazis killed by the Basterds, Sgt. Wilhelm (a low-ranking soldier celebrating his son’s birthday), fairly sympathetically, as if we were meant to question the actions of the Basterds.

All in all, the movie is a very entertaining, though not particularly historically accurate, film, and I highly recommend this movie to anyone looking to fill three hours with a good show. (For anyone looking for historical accuracy, I recommend to you Downfall.)

Good night,
-AnJ