Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt , Mélanie Laurent , Christoph Waltz , Eli Roth , Michael Fassbender , Diane Kruger , Daniel Brühl , Til Schweiger

Filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is an expert when it comes to unifying genres. The beauty of his films is the technique of telling the simplest of stories with twists. Refrences of pop culture in long conversations, manipulating the films pace with retro music and surprising the audience with his multilayered characters is the formula Tarantino seems to have mastered. Inglorious Basterds is a no holds barred battering on our senses. The director is least bothered to brash stereotypes and clichés; it’s his sadistic take on human emotions that distinguishes his cinema from other independent directors. You will love the volatility and his ability of effortlessly creating immense tension and suddenly mixing it with laugh-out-loud moments.

In the first year of the German occupation of France, Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent) witnesses the execution of her family at the hand of Nazi Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Shosanna narrowly escapes and flees to Paris where she forges a new identity as the owner and operator of a cinema.
Elsewhere in Europe, Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) organizes a group of Jewish American soldiers to perform swift, shocking acts of retribution. Later known to their enemy as "the basterds," Raine's squad joins German actress and undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) on a mission to take down the leaders of the Third Reich. Fates converge under a cinema marquis, where Shosanna is poised to carry out a revenge plan of her own.
Employing pulp and propaganda in equal measure, Inglorious Basterds weaves together the infamous, oppressed, real and larger-than-life stories of World War 2.

Quentin Tarantino has amalgamated the screenplay wonderfully. Following the structure of Reservoir Dogs, Tarantino has used character suspension and time spaces fruitfully to establish each and every character in the film. The cinematographer uses a grayish yellow undertone beautifully to establish the graphic novel effect in the film.

The dialogues accentuate emotions, specially the first scene where Col Hans Landa (Christopher Waltz) compares the hostility of a rat to survive in human environment to his hatred for Jews. The screenplay is purposely kept volatile to involve audience in the proceedings. The director manages to deconstruct the screenplay into 4 segments successfully highlighting the struggles and fantasies of all the characters.

Christopher Waltz is brilliant as a tyrant. He plays a self obsessed megalomaniac to perfection. Watch out for the first scene in the film where he interrogates Perrier LaPadite and asks him to converse in English as he seems to have exhausted his vocabulary in French. Christopher Waltz gets into the skin of his character and performs with multilayered emotions. He is a sure shot contender for this year’s Academy Awards (Oscars). Brad Pitt, even with his weird phonetic accent, is likeable. He is great in comic scenes.