Inglourious Basterds

Quentin Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds is a bold, revisionist war film that rewrites history with a vengeance. Set in Nazi-occupied France during World War II, the movie follows two parallel plots to assassinate the Nazi high command at a Paris cinema. The first involves a group of Jewish-American soldiers led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine, who scalp and brutalize Nazis to spread terror. The second is orchestrated by Shosanna Dreyfus, a French Jewish cinema owner seeking revenge for her family's murder. Their paths converge with the charming yet ruthless SS Colonel Hans Landa, played by Christoph Waltz in an Oscar-winning performance.

The film premiered at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival, where Waltz took the Best Actor prize. It grossed over $321 million worldwide on a $70 million budget, becoming Tarantino's highest-grossing film at the time. The ensemble cast includes Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Eli Roth, Michael Fassbender, and Diane Kruger. Tarantino spent more than a decade developing the script, which he originally conceived as a spaghetti western-style men-on-a-mission movie inspired by Enzo G. Castellari's The Inglorious Bastards. [edit]

In 1941, SS Colonel Hans Landa visits a French dairy farmer, Perrier LaPadite, to question him about a missing Jewish family. Landa's polite yet menacing interrogation reveals the Dreyfus family is hiding under the floorboards. He orders his soldiers to open fire, killing everyone except young Shosanna Dreyfus, who escapes into the countryside.

Three years later, Lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits eight Jewish-American soldiers for a secret mission: to kill as many Nazis as possible by any means. The Basterds, as they call themselves, leave a trail of scalped and mutilated bodies, earning a fearsome reputation. Meanwhile, Shosanna has assumed the identity of Emmanuelle Mimieux and runs a cinema in Paris. Her quiet life is disrupted when German war hero Private Frederick Zoller becomes infatuated with her and convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere of his propaganda film, Nation's Pride, at her theater. Shosanna sees this as a chance for revenge and, with her projectionist Marcel, plans to lock the doors and burn the cinema down using highly flammable nitrate film stock.

The British intelligence learns of the premiere and recruits German actress Bridget von Hammersmark to help the Basterds infiltrate the event. Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a British film critic turned officer, joins the mission. At a tavern rendezvous, Hicox's cover is blown during a tense card game, leading to a violent shootout that kills Hicox and most of his team. Von Hammersmark survives but is wounded. Landa, investigating the incident, realizes the Basterds are planning an attack on the premiere and decides to let them proceed while secretly negotiating his own escape.

On the night of the premiere, Landa personally escorts Shosanna to the theater, subtly hinting that he knows her true identity. The Basterds, disguised as Italian filmmakers, enter the cinema. Inside, the audience watches Nation's Pride as Shosanna and Marcel prepare their trap. The tension builds as multiple plans converge, each unaware of the other.[edit]