1978 - INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS, Tarantino's World War II film

Well either you like Tarantino or you don't like Tarantino because it's all here in his World War II fantasy. The violence, lots of talk and a really crazy story.

Tarantino, one of the few directors who can actually channel cinema history into something original was clearly influenced by Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen, Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards and The White Hell of Pitz Palu by German directors Arnold Fanck and G.W. Pabst.  I'm sure I missed a bunch of film references, but Tarantino knows his movies.

 

Tarantino's casting is equally entertaining. Brad Pitt as Lt Aldo Raine sporting a southern accent, horror director Eli Roth, Mike Meyers as an allied general and coming out of retirement actor Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill.  Other equally important performances are Christoph Waltz as a very smart Nazi officer, Mélanie Laurent as a Jewish woman out for revenge, Michael Fassbender as a film critic turned British commando and Diane Kruger playing an actress turned double agent.  

 

The plot has Pitt and his commando unit creating havoc behind enemy lines which somehow dovetails into an encounter with Adolph Hitler and his high command.  With Tarantino the fun isn't the climax but how you get to the climax.

One of Tarantino's most entertaining films. the running time is 153 minutes and as usual Quentin Tarantino wrote the screenplay.