That basterd: Tarantino does it again

So how, exactly, does one follow Death Proof or more importantly, Kill Bill, the two-part chop socky homage that showcased auteur Quentin Tarantino’s penchant for cartoonish violence, intersecting storylines, ace casting and resurrecting actors of yesteryear? How about a fantastical re-imagining of the second world war where a moustachioed Brad Pitt leads a rogue pack of Nazi-scalping soldiers called, you guessed it, the Inglourious Basterds, and introduces North American audiences to one hell of an actor in Christoph Waltz.

The film, like most of Tarantino’s best work, is an experience that stays with you afterwards. Divided into five chapters, Basterds takes its time coming into focus which suits Tarantino just fine as he skillfully ratchets up the tension. During a particularly juicy scene, actors Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender, Til Schweiger, Gedeon Burkhard and August Diehl personify the term ensemble cast as they skillfully let the hostility mount behind tight smiles and forced laughs before things get, well, messy. Fassbender also serves up one of the film’s best lines - “There’s a special place in hell for people who waste good Scotch” - and it goes down like Scotland’s finest. Waltz, who won the Best Actor award at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, delivers his lines with gusto and the right amount of patience and quiet aggression and nearly steals every scene he’s in. Watch out for his come Oscar time.

Another Tarantino casting coup comes in the form of French actress Mélanie Laurent who plays Shosanna Dreyfus, a young Jewish girl who escaped Col. Landa’s (Waltz) bullets before happening upon his company four years later in Paris. Armed with a survivor’s lust for revenge, Dreyfus proves to be as cunning and dangerous as her enemies and unleashes a ploy worthy of her malicious foe that has to be seen to be believed.

But what of Pitt, you ask, whose mug has been prominently splashed across every poster? In classic subverting-his-good-looks mode, he dons a thick as molasses accent, imposing scar and under bite to convincingly play Lt. Aldo Raine and injects humour and charisma into the supporting role, delighting in every line of Tarantino’s look-at-me dialogue. What he lacks in sex appeal he more than makes up for in swagger.

Surprisingly, the Pulp Fiction director’s flair for striking visuals is all in the details here (a close-up of crème for strudel, an oversized pipe for the Colonel, Shosanna’s blood-red lips) but he does allow for Tarantino-esque indulgences like Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz’s tangential back story, complete with dramatic superhero on-screen titles, and an off-camera cameo by Harvey Keitel.

Less graphically violent that you’d expect for a war film, Tarantino waits until the end to pull out all the stops and crafts a satisfying, severely bloody, denouement for his sure-to-be-divisive effort. And as one of cinema’s most provocative, inspired and brave directors, he doesn’t disappoint.