Inglourious Basterds

This movie is a taste of brilliance brought to you by the insurmountable Quentin Tarantino. Brad Pitt, blowing things up, and Nazis; what more could you possibly ask for?

The opening scene puts us on the beautiful French countryside and focuses in on a man tending to his dairy farm, with the help of his daughters. Think Clint Eastwood, Unforgiven; or Paul Newman, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as he approaches the innocent boy and his family on their farm. This scene leads us allows us to look into the life of a man's man who aspires to do good, but in the end becomes who all of us have inevitably and regrettably been at one point in our lives: bad, or a tool used by the bad guy, if they aren't one and the same. The tears he sheds are felt by the audience when he realizes he must help the Nazi Jew-hunter, or suffer the consequences put on himself and his three exquisitely beautiful daughters.

This is also the scene in which we are introduced to the Jew-hunter, adeptfully and artfully played by Christoph Waltz. You know who he is the moment he steps on screen as he exudes meticulous evil and commands the most deeply felt fear. As he sits and drinks a glass of milk brought to him by one of the dairy farmer's daughters, and casually discusses his talent for hunting Jews and the weight of the lives being hidden by the dairy farmer, your fear and disgust for him rises to a bitter taste in your mouth.

This fear is realized again in a wonderful scene expertly carried out by Tarantino, in which he places the dairy farmer's only surviving daughter, Shoshanna, at a table surrounded by the pretentious, self-important heirarchy of the Third Reich. None of them know who she truly is: a Jew. And the fear of her position is felt by the audience, just as her father's was, when she sees the Jew-hunter approach. Does he know who she is? Can he see her; smell her? Will he bring her to an end?
Tarantino's filmmaking is brought to a palpable edge-of-your-seat moment when the Jew-hunter orders a glass of milk for Shoshanna, the same drink of choice given to him by the dairy farmer as he weighed out the lives of her family.

These scenes are but a glance into another triumph given to us by Tarantino.

Please watch this film. Over and over again.