'Inglorious Basterds' Review: Bizarre, Bold, and "bloody" brilliant!

🌟Inglorious Basterds🌟Review🌟10/10🌟My 5 10/10 Movies Review Week🌟

Directed by Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Melanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender and Daniel Bruhl

Bizarre, bold, bloody, and brilliant, there's no denying that Inglourious Basterds has all the vim, vigor, and excitement of every other Quentin Tarantino film. It's also a glorious exercise in style over substance (which Tarantino proves he is great at doing time and time again) with the Nazi high command obliterated in spectacular fashion in a movie theater as the action playing out up on the screen begins to pale in comparison to what actually happens inside that theater.

Tarantino has said that the film is his fantasy of "how cinema can save the world," and while that's a naive sentiment, it's one that's played for action and laughs here. Pitt gives a blood-soaked comedic performance as the grunting, grim Raine, and he's matched by Christoph Walltz's Col. Hans Landa on the Nazi side. Then there's Eli Roth's Bear Jew who hit a bloody homerun, Diane Kruger was brilliant as Bridget Von Hammersmark the Celebrity turned double agent, and there were so many other great supporting performances from the likes of Fassbender, Bruhl and Til Schweiger. But for me the true star of the film was Melanie Laurent (Shosanna Dreyfus) the only surviving member of her family (no thanks to Col. Hans Landa) which creates the stem for this film.

Featuring long, loopy conversations punctuated by brief bursts of bloody violence before culminating in a incendiary -- in every sense of the word -- finale, Inglourious Basterds ultimately has to be enjoyed as a piece of pure moviemaking energy.