Film: “Inglorious Basterds” directed by Quentin Tarantino

Always rewarding to take a long flight and catch the movies that have somehow passed you by. Especially if they’re made by one of the most controversial and arguably creative minds in modern filmmaking: Quentin Tarantino. That’s right, I said QT.

For starters, there’s “Reservoir Dogs (1991), memorable for both for its music and its cast. “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”(2019)? An OK Boomer’s wet dream. And now, courtesy of the wonderful inflight service on Delta,  i’m happy to report I’ve finally see “Inglourious Basterds” (2009).

Like “Once Upon,” IB reimagines history, and in particular, a nasty period in history: the Nazi occupation of France. A polished and perfectly repellent Major Landa (the Oscar-winning Christoph Weitz) bullies a humble farmer in Vichy France into revealing that the farmer’s hidden Jews in his cellar. All the Jewish family members are subsequently murdered, except for 18-year-old Shoshanna (Melanie Laurent) who escapes out the cellar window.

Cut to another part  of France several months later, where US Captain Aldo Ray (Brad Pitt) addresses a platoon of Jewish-American soldiers known as the “Inglourious Basterds”(sic). Their sole mission:  hunt down Nazis and kill them. “I want 100 scalps a day,” he tells the troops, in his Great Smoky Mountain drawl.

Back at Allied HQ, meanwhile, Winston Churchill (Rod Taylor) and the Allies are hatching a plot to lock Nazis inside a small theater in Paris and burn the place down. Unbeknownst to them, however, Shoshanna who has escaped to Paris and who under an assumed identity now operates said theater, has come up with the same idea. Turns out the theater will host the premiere of a movie celebrating a young Nazi soldier (Daniel Bruhl) who killed 300 innocent people. As a “war hero,” all the Nazi bigwigs including the Fuhrer, Goebbels, Bormann, and Nazi collaborator Emil Jannings will attend the premiere. Mein Lieber Schwann! (look that one up.)

The film goes off on a number of tangents which ultimately dovetail with the main story. Of these, I was particularly taken by the scene set in a small Parisian wine cellar where Nazi officers drink whisky and play a game of charades with a beautiful spy (Diane Kruger). The film’s grand finale drew such a war whoop of satisfaction from me, it caused my fellow Delta passengers (including G) to shush me forthwith. So I shushed, and if you know what I’m referring to, you shush too.

The message of this immensely enjoyable and improbable film? There are not good people on both sides. There are bad hombres out there who deserve the worst retribution. And in IB, the Nazi basterds get it. Prosit!