Haywire

Haywire - Dir. Steven Soderbergh (2012)

Steven Soderbergh has to be considered one of the most versatile filmmakers working today. He can effortlessly switch from slick blockbusters like Erin Brockovich and the Ocean's series to iconoclastic indie projects like Bubble and Full Frontal. Soderbergh's latest film, Haywire, is a melding of both worlds and his first foray into the action genre.

Haywire was conceived specifically for Gina Carano, who is considered by many to be THE face of female MMA. This is her first movie role and though she's not exactly an actress with great range, she is a believable badass. Carano is far more suited to the role of action heroine than others like Kate Beckinsale, Angelina Jolie, or Milla Jovovich. She's not wafer thin, but curvy, tough, and beautiful.

Carano is the awesomely named Mallory Kane, an operative for a private security firm specializing in secretive missions. She is betrayed by her boss, Kenneth (Ewan McGregor), following a job in Barcelona to rescue a Chinese journalist held hostage. Mallory is sent to Dublin under the guise of posing as arm candy for Paul (Michael Fassbender), a British freelance agent, who is actually tasked with killing her. When that fails, Mallory sets out on a quest for revenge and leaves a trail of bodies in her wake.

Haywire opens somewhere in the middle of the story with Mallory confronting a fellow agent, Aaron (Channing Tatum), in a diner. After a vicious fight, she grabs a good samaritan (Michael Angarano) and forces him to drive her away as she tells him his story. Not the most original device, but a clever and simple way to unfold the narrative.

Aside from beginning in media res, the plot is fairly straightforward and minimalistic. It's a close cousin to another Soderbergh revenge picture, The Limey, which was also penned by Haywire screenwriter Lem Dobbs. In fact, it could almost be mistaken for the type of low-budget, direct-to-video actioners that are pumped out by Seagal, Van Damme or Dolph Lundgren. What sets Haywire apart from such detritus is Steven Soderbergh and an A-list cast.

This is Gina Carano's acting debut and Soderbergh plays to her strengths. He doesn't give Carano any extended monologues, making sure her lines are short and sweet. He even tweaked her voice in post-production to make it deeper and more authoritative. Carano tends to deliver some of her dialogue in a robotic manner that actually accentuates the cold and ruthless demeanor of Mallory Kane. It's not unlike what Soderbergh did with ex-porn star Sasha Grey in The Girlfriend Experience. There, Grey's somewhat wooden performance played into her character's detached personality. Rather than placing the entire burden on Carano's shoulders, Soderbergh allows his impressive supporting cast to do most of the heavy lifting. In addition to Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender, the ensemble includes Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas as shady government officials and Bill Paxton as Mallory's ex-military father.

In any event, no one came to see Carano deliver Shakespearean soliloquies. You're here to see her kick ass.

Soderbergh takes a basic approach to the action sequences and doesn't drown them with shoddy CGI, heavy metal music or cartoonish foley effects. He doesn't turn them into an incomprehensible mess by using rapid editing or manic camera movements. He keeps the camera steady and shoots in wide and medium shots. It's a joy seeing Carano bouncing off a wall and smashing somebody in the face with a hard fist. Two of the best set pieces in the film are the opening diner brawl and a car chase with Carano evading police by driving backwards through a snow covered forest. The centerpiece of Haywire is a brutal fight between Carano and Fassbender inside a hotel room. Soderbergh allows the tension to simmer to a boil as the couple calmly walks to their door and Carano slowly slips out of her heels. You know shit is about to explode, but you just don't know when.

Forgoing the typical rock soundtrack, Soderbergh opts for a sleek and jazzy score by David Holmes, who was also the composer on the Ocean's series. The music certainly has that same old school feel and combined with the subdued color palette gives Haywire a 70's throwback style.

Working with less money and less resources, Steven Soderbergh manages to blow away the big budget schlock by Michael Bay and generic directors like Len Wiseman or Brett Ratner. Haywire is arthouse action comparable to Nicholas Winding Refn's Drive, which was my pick for best film of 2011. Hopefully, Haywire won't be forgotten when it's time to write up the Best of 2012 lists. It's a unique film that marks the beginning of a promising new career for Gina Carano.

Rating: **** (*****)

Jane Eyre

Jane Eyre - Dir. Cary Fukunaga (2011)

Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre is an indelible work of literature. As such, it has seen dozens of cinematic adaptations including a silent film version in 1915 and a 1996 version directed by Franco Zeffirelli and starring Charlotte Gainsbourg and William Hurt. Perhaps, the most famous take is the 1944 version starring Joan Fontaine and Orson Welles and based on a script adapted by John Houseman and Aldous Huxley. Director Cary Fukunaga and screenwriter Moira Buffini (Tamara Drewe) have the unenviable task of breathing new life into a story that has been oft-told in film, television, and on stage.

Bronte incorporated many elements from her own life and beliefs in the original novel (published in 1847) with the title character serving as a sort-of analogue for the author. By all accounts, Bronte was a forward thinking woman, which informed Jane Eyre's views on the ultra-religious and patriarchal society she inhabited. Much like Jane Eyre, Bronte was also sent to a boarding school along with her sisters, including Emily, author of Wuthering Heights. The poor conditions of the school led to the deaths of her eldest sisters Maria and Elizabeth due to tuberculosis.

At a young age Jane Eyre (played as a child by Amelia Clarkson) lost both her parents and was sent to live with her Uncle Reed and his family. When he dies, she is left in the care of her cruel Aunt Sarah (Sally Hawkins), who ships Jane off to the Lowood Institution, a Dickensian nightmare of fear and abuse. The headmaster, Mr. Brocklehurst (Simon McBurney), has already branded Jane as deceitful and encourages all others to shun her. The one friend Jane does make dies due to the negligence of the staff.

Jane leaves Lowood as an adult (Mia Wasikowska) to accept a position as governess at the reclusive Thornfield Hall. She is taken in by the kindly housekeeper, Mrs. Fairfax (Judi Dench), but finds the lord of the house, Mr. Rochester (Michael Fassbender), is less than welcoming. Rochester spends little time at the estate and his first encounter with Jane could hardly be considered a meet cute after he is thrown from his horse. He even accuses Jane of bewitching his steed. This is exemplary of the brusque manner in which Rochester treats everyone around him. Yet, he is the first real man Jane has ever met and there is an undeniable attraction. Girls love the bad boys.

As their relationship grows, Rochester discovers Jane is an intelligent, young woman who isn't afraid to speak her mind or stand up to him. He finds her a refreshing change of pace from the cowering servants and the sycophantic bluebloods he usually converses with on a daily basis. But, Thornfield is a sinister place and she and her master hold their own dark secrets.

Fukunaga may seem like an odd choice to direct a 19th century romantic drama having made his feature film debut with Sin Nombre, a thriller about gangbangers and South American immigrants making their way to America. Yet, he and Buffini have found a fresh approach to the source material by focusing on the love story between Jane and Rochester instead of attempting an all-encompassing adaptation. The film begins in media res with the rain-soaked heroine collapsing on the doorstep of the pious St. John Rivers (Jamie Bell). From there, Jane's tale of woe unfolds through a series of flashbacks. Still, it feels as if more screen time could have been devoted to their relationship and that the resolution came too quickly. At just under two hours, Jane Eyre (not counting end credits) is one of those rare instances where an extra fifteen or twenty minutes could have been an improvement to the overall narrative.

Despite a rushed conclusion, Jane Eyre is buoyed by a pair of powerhouse performances by its lead. Mia Wasikowska had already played a similar, eponymous role in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. While Jane Eyre provided a less colorful and fantastical world, Wasikowska displayed the same aura of strength and determination. On the page, Eyre was described as a plain looking girl and Fukunaga can't hide Wasikowska's natural beauty despite tying her hair back in a severe bun and hiding her face inside a bonnet. On film, Wasikowska's expressive eyes and pale, white skin make her look like a porcelain doll come to life, which adds to the fragility of her character. Her leading man is no slouch either. Michael Fassbender has risen in stature after strong performances in indie films like Hunger and Fish Tank. He's come to the attention of Hollywood for his roles in Inglourious Basterds and most recently as Magneto, another tortured soul in X-Men: First Class. Fassbender definitely gets his chance to play tortured again as the conflicted Rochester, running hot and cold at a moment's notice. The supporting cast is also good, including Simon McBurney, who seems to be giving Timothy Spall a run for his money as the go-to British character actor for malevolent antagonists. There's also the always dependable Judi Dench and Sally Hawkins, who does a complete 180 from the cheerful Poppy in Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky.

The actors' work is accentuated by the atmospheric direction of Fukunaga and the cinematography of Adriano Goldman. Using only natural lighting, Goldman crafts a picturesque view of the English countryside, but the movie truly shines at night with only moonlight wafting through the curtains and the flickering of a candle to light the scene. The moody lighting does wonders to highlight the eeriness of Thornfield. You can almost feel the chilling winds hitting your body. It's no wonder so many died of a young age by tuberculosis, typhus, or pneumonia.

Ardent fans of the original novel may find that this latest adaptation is missing too much of the source material. However, Fukunaga's film is hardly a Cliff Notes version of Charlotte Bronte's classic. While it would have benefited from a longer runtime, Jane Eyre is a compelling take on the Gothic love story anchored by two amazing performances from Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender.

Rating: *** (*****)

X-Men: First Class

X-Men: First Class - Dir. Matthew Vaughn (2011)

X = $

It’s a simple formula that has worked out for Marvel Comics for decades. Put the letter ‘X’ in the title and you’re almost guaranteed high sales figures. Development began in 1989 for a feature film based on Marvel’s biggest franchise, but it wouldn’t be until 2000 that an X-Men picture would finally see the light of day. X-Men came at the cusp of a new age where comic book movies are now a staple of the Hollywood machine. Its sequel, X2: X-Men United, was even better and widely considered to be one of the best comic book adaptations. The franchise lost steam with the third installment, X-Men: The Last Stand, and spin-off, X-Men Origins: Wolverine. The behind-the-scenes drama seemed more interesting than either of the later films.

Director Bryan Singer defected to Warner Brothers to helm the disappointing Superman Returns. Fox rushed production on Last Stand with Matthew Vaughn as director. However, Vaughn would drop out a month before principal photography and Brett Ratner replaced him. Singer and Vaughn have returned with X-Men: First Class, a prequel/reboot that ties into the first two films while ignoring the events of Last Stand and Wolverine. The screenplay passed through numerous hands with the original draft by Josh Schwartz, the creator of teen-centric TV dramas like The OC and Gossip Girl. Elements from a proposed X-Men Origins: Magneto project by Sheldon Turner (Up in the Air) was merged with a new draft by Jamie Moss (Rise of the Planet of the Apes), which was rewritten by the Thor duo of Ashley Edward Miller & Zack Stentz and again by Vaughn & Jane Goldman.

First Class takes us back to the opening sequence of the first X-Men with a young Erik Lehnsherr utilizing his magnetic powers for the first time as a concentration camp prisoner. Meanwhile, in affluent Westchester County, a very young Charles Xavier meets a shapeshifting girl named Raven, who he adopts as a sister. Years pass and an adult Xavier (James McAvoy) attends Oxford to study genetic mutations while Raven (Jennifer Lawrence) works as a waitress. While Xavier uses his telepathic powers to pick up women, Lehnsherr (Michael Fassbender) hunts down fugitive Nazis. At the top of his hit list is the sadistic camp doctor who murdered his mother. That doctor has reinvented himself as Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a millionaire playboy with the power to absorb and channel energy. Shaw is manipulating the Americans and the Russians in order to trigger a nuclear holocaust that will wipe out mankind and allow mutants to rule the Earth. Xavier and Lehnsherr eventually join forces with CIA agent Moira MacTaggert (Rose Byrne) to stop Shaw from igniting World War III.

Shaw has assembled a group of powerful mutants to aid in his quest for genetic supremacy. They include: Emma Frost (January Jones), a telepath who can transform into diamond; Riptide (Alez Gonzalez), who is able to summon powerful winds; and Azazel (Jason Flemyng), a demonic looking teleporter who comic fans will know as the father of Nightcrawler.

The good guys enlist their own band of young recruits including: Banshee (Caleb Landry Jones), who can emit sonic screams; Havok (Lucas Till), who is able to fire plasma beams from his chest; Dr. Henry McCoy aka Beast (Nicholas Hoult), a scientist with prehensile feet; Angel Salvadore (Zoe Kravitz), a go-go dancer with insect-like wings; and Darwin (Edi Gathegi), who has the power of reactive evolution.

As you can tell that's quite the roster of characters for a movie a little over two hours long. Don't forget Oliver Platt as an unnamed Man in Black and various military personnel played by veteran character actors like Michael Ironside, James Remar, Glenn Morshower, and Rade Serbedzija. Fox has a penchant for overstuffing their comic book movies with more characters and subplots than they can handle and First Class is an unfortunate victim of that philosophy. Characters like Angel and Darwin are hardly given any chance to develop or even matter to the overall story. Riptide doesn't even have a single line of dialogue in the movie; he's just there to be the silent and menacing henchman. Despite dropping Marvel's merry mutants hip deep into the Cuban Missile Crisis, First Class doesn't fully utilize its unique 60's setting aside from giving Kevin Bacon the excuse to grow some awesome sideburns. Xavier and Magneto have been compared many times to Martin Luther King and Malcolm X in their differing philosophies. Yet, civil rights barely factors into the film. Ironically, the only mutants of color are either killed or turned evil.

Notoriously picky fanboys won't be pleased with the way First Class takes liberties with the source material. These aren't the original X-Men from the comics. Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, and the other Angel (Warren Worthington III) are nowhere to be found. The movie Havok isn't intended to be Cyclops's brother though changing his beams from white to red is likely meant to be some sort of concession. Moira McTaggert has gone from Scottish scientist to American secret agent. As a life-long comic book reader, I had little issue with the changes made in First Class. The X-Men books were known for their convoluted mythology as storylines were lost and found on the whim of an ever-changing line-up of creative teams. First Class isn't set in the world of the comic books, but the one created for the movies.

Fans of the entire series may be confused as First Class doesn't completely gel with events depicted in the previous films. When it does, it feels as if Fox wasn't sure a sequel would be possible, so they felt obliged to throw in as many recognizable elements as they could. We find out the origins of their codenames, the creation of Cerebro, and how Professor X winds up in a wheelchair. The movie inevitably feels rushed with the Xavier-Magneto relationship put in fast forward. The filmmakers do throw in a few references and in-jokes for the hardcores. There are also a couple clever cameos, including one from a familiar face who is the best there is at what he does.

Despite a few flaws, X-Men: First Class stands as the second best entry in the franchise with X2 ranking as number one. The primary reason for the prequel's success is the casting of James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender as the friends turned enemies. In the past, McAvoy has played reactive characters. As Xavier, he's more aggressive, growing from a cocky prat to a responsible mentor. However, it is Fassbender's Magneto who truly anchors the film. The solo Magneto movie was largely cancelled because Fox didn't believe he could carry a picture alone. After First Class, I would love to see a Magneto: Nazi Hunter starring Fassbender. No pun intended, but the actor is absolutely magnetic in the role of the tortured villain. One of the film's best moments is a Boys From Brazil-esque scene with Lehnsherr tracking two former SS officers to a tiny bar in South America.

Jennifer Lawrence is equally phenomenal as the young Mystique, making her more than just the naked blue chick. She becomes a vulnerable girl desperately searching for her place in a society that finds her ugly. Kevin Bacon is also great and it makes you wonder why it took so long for someone to cast him as a supervillain. Bacon is deliciously over-the-top in the beginning of First Class as the mad scientist looking to exploit a teenaged Lehnsherr's burgeoning powers. The same cannot be said for January Jones as Emma Frost, a sexy and manipulative femme fatale in the comics. Her diamond form is poorly realized and when she's not made of jewels, she's made of wood. Jones is practically robotic in the role. Is this the same Betty Draper we've come to know and love?

Kick-Ass proved that Vaughn could handle high-octane action sequences and First Class has plenty of cool set pieces. The film's climax juggles multiple battles without descending into a jumbled mess of special effects. There are also several unique displays of power such as Azazel's gruesome method of dispatching humans. A telepathic battle involving rotating rooms was cut when Inception beat them to the punch. Vaughn was heavily influenced by classic James Bond films while making First Class and it shows. Sebastian Shaw is the archetypal Bond villain with his secret headquarters and tricked out submarine. The prequel is a globetrotting adventure with higher stakes than any other X-film. The first act is hardly over and the audience has already been taken to Poland, Switzerland, New York, England, Las Vegas, and a Kubrickian war room underneath the Pentagon. It's also fantastic that they put the X-Men in their classic blue and yellow uniforms.

X-Men: First Class gives the X-Men franchise the vital jumpstart it needed and heals the damage done by the awful Last Stand and Wolverine. With a fresh, new cast in place, the X-Men are opened to new possibilities such as a film set in the 70's based on Giant-Size X-Men #1, a redux of the Dark Phoenix Saga, or Days of Future Past.

Rating: *** ½ (*****)

Centurion

Centurion - Dir. Neil Marshall (2010)


Neil Marshall is a genre director through and through. Marshall’s feature film debut was Dog Soldiers, which can best be described as Deliverance meets Platoon with werewolves. His next film was the claustrophobic spelunking horror flick, The Descent. But, Doomsday was probably Marshall’s most geektastic work, a post-apocalyptic action movie that paid homage to Mad Max, Escape From New York, and Excalibur. Marshall brings a trash cinema flavor to his version of the swords and sandals film.

Centurion is one of two recent projects inspired by the disappearance of the Ninth Legion of the Roman Army, beating Kevin Macdonald’s Eagle of the Ninth to the theaters. It is 117 AD and the Roman Empire has been mired for years in their attempts to conquer Britannia. The polished and disciplined Roman soldiers are no match for their supposedly backwater natives, the Picts. They have stymied every effort by the invading Roman forces with their knowledge of the rugged terrain and use of ruthless guerilla tactics.

Enter one Quintus Dias (Michael Fassbender), a brave Roman soldier and son of a gladiator. He is the sole survivor of a Pict assault on his outpost in what is now Scotland. Quintus manages to escape and comes across the Ninth Legion under the command of the awesomely named General Titus Virilus (Dominic West). The General has been tasked by an opportunistic senator to kill the Pict King Gorlacon (Ulrich Thomsen) and wipe out all opposing forces once and for all. However, the Legion is slaughtered and Gen. Virilus captured with only Quintus and a handful of comrades surviving the ambush.

After failing to rescue their commanding officer, Quintus and his ragtag band of legionnaires must brave harsh terrains and equally harsh weather in order to return home. They are dogged at every turn by a hunting party led by the animalistic Etain (Olga Kurylenko), an expert tracker and warrior goddess. Etain was raped as a child by Romans who also cut out her tongue and killed her whole family. She’s pretty pissed off about all that.

The Roman fugitives receive a brief respite when they come across the home of a beautiful village girl (Imogen Poots) who was banished by the Picts for witchcraft.

Centurion is hardly a nuanced picture with rich characters. Fassbender who was so excellent in Hunger and Inglourious Basterds isn’t called upon to do much than be the square jawed hero. Liam Cunningham essentially reprises his role from Clash of the Titans as the crotchety veteran. I couldn’t tell the rest of the fellows apart without double checking IMDB. One soldier is a cook from the Middle East, another is an African marathon runner. Unique traits not seen in similar films, yet they are hardly expanded upon.

Marshall draws obvious allusions to Vietnam and the conflicts in the Middle East, but any political pretenses are buried under a mountain of severed limbs and mutilated corpses. Body parts fly in every direction and skulls are crushed in an explosion of blood. It’s a pure testosterone driven film. Olga Kurylenko is sexy and fierce though too slight and petite to be a believable huntress. But, Marshall isn’t going for true historical accuracy.

Marshall dispenses with pseudo-Shakespearean dialogue and doesn’t feel the need to stretch out the runtime. It’s a welcome change of pace to bloated films like Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood. Centurion is a quick and dirty version of the historical epic for action junkies.

Rating: **

Jonah Hex

Jonah Hex - Dir. Jimmy Hayward (2010)


Comic book movies are now a staple of the summer blockbuster season. This modern age of the comic book film can be traced back to an unlikely source in Blade. For decades, Marvel had attempted to turn their characters into successful feature films. Yet, all they had to show for it are a pair of awful direct-to-video movies based on Captain America and the Punisher and a Roger Corman-directed Fantastic Four that was never even released. With top properties like Spider-Man and the X-Men languishing in development hell, it was an unknown vampire slayer that broke through for Marvel and set the stage for Iron Man and others.

In recent years, Marvel’s main competitor, DC Comics, has had massive success with its rebooted Batman franchise. However, Superman Returns was a failure and they’ve struggled to get other A-list characters like Wonder Woman and the Flash off the ground while Green Lantern finally hits screens next year. It only makes sense for DC to exploit its lesser known characters or creator-owned properties to fill the void. And along rides Jonah Hex.

Hex was created by John Albano and Tony DeZuniga and first appeared in 1971 in All-Star Western #10. Set in the Old West, Hex was a bounty hunter with half his face hideously scarred. He was sold into slavery to the Apache as a child and fought for the Confederacy in adulthood. Later, he was revamped with a supernatural bent as part of DC’s Vertigo imprint. The movie version combines a little bit of both, but is a very loose adaptation of the character.

Josh Brolin stars as Jonah Hex; a Civil War veteran who surrendered to the Union inadvertantly resulting in the death of his best friend Jeb Turnbull (an uncredited Jeffrey Dean Morgan). In revenge, Jeb’s father, Quentin Turnbull (John Malkovich) forces Hex to watch helplessly while his wife and son are murdered. Left for dead with his face branded, Hex is saved by Indians and the ordeal leaves him the power to temporarily speak with the dead.

Since then, the disfigured anti-hero has made his mark as a renowned bounty hunter and gunfighter of exceptional skill. Meanwhile, Turnbull has become a terrorist striking out against the American government. He steals a massive supergun, dubbed the ‘Nation Killer,’ in order to destroy Washington during the country’s centennial celebration.

Jonah Hex endured a problematic journey into the theaters. The script was originally written by Neveldine & Taylor, the team behind the Crank films and Gamer, who were also attached to direct. Brolin signed onto the project supposedly because he loved its atrociousness. The pair left the project and was eventually replaced by the oddball choice of Jimmy Hayward whose only previous experience was the animated Horton Hears a Who. The project saw last minute reshoots under the supervision of Francis Lawrence (Constantine, I Am Legend) and a massive retooling of the plot.

What’s left is a complete mess that is barely 80 minutes long, not counting the credits. Jonah Hex is like two fractured films hastily duct taped together. There is a strange battle on a metaphysical plain between Hex and Turnbull that was once set to be the climax of the movie. Instead, it’s clumsily and confusingly intercut with two major sequences of the final product. The mystical elements are excised and in their place we find ludicrous weaponry like saddle-mounted Gatling guns, dynamite launching crossbows, and a monstrous cannon powered by glowing orange orbs invented by Eli Whitney, the creator of the cotton gin. No, really.

Some of the cast seem to realize what a colossal turd they’re in and play along. Brolin tries to rise above it all as the gravelly voiced Hex while Michael Fassbender goes over-the-top as a knife-wielding Irish henchman. Megan Fox also appears as a tough hooker with a lilting Southern accent and an impossibly thin hourglass waist. She seriously looks like she’ll snap in half at any second. For some reason, Fox almost always appears in close-ups with soft lighting no matter what the situation. Will Arnett is woefully miscast as a straight-laced Union officer while Michael Shannon pops in for one and only one scene as the ringleader of an underground fight club. Both actors are victims of the reshoots and slapdash editing.

Jonah Hex never purports to be anything more than a low-grade B-movie. Some might be able to enjoy it on a ‘so bad, it’s good’ level, but not me. Jonah Hex makes no attempt to remain faithful to the source material. It’s a shame really as the character had the potential to star in a Leone-style Spaghetti Western. The movie isn’t so much A Fistful of Dollars as it is Wild Wild West. In the pantheon of DC adaptations, it ranks at the bottom of the pile alongside Catwoman and Steel.

Rating: * ½

Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds - Dir. Quentin Tarantino (2009)

”…And when the Germans close their eyes at night and their subconscious tortures them for the evil they’ve done, it will be with thoughts of us that it tortures them with…Sound good?”

Quentin Tarantino has dabbled in a variety of genres and given each his own unique stamp. He’s tackled the heist film (Reservoir Dogs), the gangster pic (Pulp Fiction), blaxploitation (Jackie Brown), the drive-in B-movie (Death Proof) and though he only wrote the screenplay, Tarantino has stated that True Romance was his take on the love story. Kill Bill was his stab at the martial arts epic and Spaghetti Western. Now, Tarantino adds his signature to the war movie with the long in development, Inglourious Basterds. More specifically, I’m speaking of the ‘bunch of guys go on a mission during World War 2’ subgenre, taking inspiration from similar films like The Dirty Dozen and Enzo G. Castellari’s original Inglorious Bastards.

With scars around his neck and a country fried hillbilly accent, Brad Pitt becomes Lt. Aldo Raine, the commander of a Jewish unit dropped into enemy territory. Their mission is to kill every Nazi they find. Known as the Bastards, Lt. Raine’s company has put the fear of God into the enemy due to their brutal methods including scalping their victims and carving Swastikas into the lucky few who escape. Also in Lt. Raine’s unit are Sgt. Donny Donowitz (Hostel director Eli Roth), a baseball bat wielding Bostonian, and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), a former German soldier imprisoned for murdering Gestapo officers in their sleep. Two unlikely members of the Bastards are B.J. Novak (best known as Ryan on The Office) and the 5’4 Samm Levine from Freaks & Geeks.

Though the Bastards are the title characters of Tarantino’s picture and the centerpiece of the film’s advertising, they really aren’t the main characters. In fact, many of the Bastards disappear without much word about their fates. The lion’s share of the attention belongs to Shoshanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), a Jewish fugitive who survived the massacre of her family, and Col. Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz), nicknamed the Jew Hunter. Having a nickname like that, it’s easy to guess who the villain of the piece is. Shoshanna is the heart of the film and there’s real heartbreak and tragedy throughout her arc. Inglourious Basterds opens with the chilling account of Col. Landa discovering her family’s hiding place underneath the floorboards of a French dairy farm.

Has there ever been a movie villain like Hans Landa? Someone so deliciously evil? The late-Heath Ledger blew audiences away with his Joker and the little known Christoph Waltz appears to be doing the same with his Landa. This is a multi-faceted character that goes beyond simple mustache twirling. His Landa greets you with a smile and friendly chit-chat and somehow it’s both humorous and unnerving. He possesses a disarming charm that actually makes you like him one minute, but then he does something monstrous and you remember he’s a fucking Nazi. Landa is also smart, quite possibly the smartest guy in the movie. His intellect and deductive abilities remind one of Sherlock Holmes and Tarantino plays those allusions up when Landa pulls out a comically large pipe.

As the Bastards cut through the Nazi ranks, Shoshanna has made her way to Paris where she now owns and operates a movie theater. The venue was left to her by an “aunt” who was to be played by Maggie Cheung before her scenes were excised from the final cut. Laurent actually learned how to operate a projector for her role and even screened a print of Reservoir Dogs along with trailers and cartoons. Much to Shoshanna’s chagrin, she is pursued romantically by an overzealous German soldier named Frederick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl) who has become the subject of his own picture after killing hundreds of American soldiers single-handedly. The Nazi high command (including Hitler) will screen the film at Shoshanna’s theater. It is here that both she and the Bastards make their plans to assassinate Hitler and all his cronies.

While Inglourious Basterds is nominally a war movie, Tarantino once again throws in a heavy dash of the Spaghetti Western into the mix. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that he fills Basterds’ score with compositions by Ennio Morricone and other pieces culled from Westerns such as The Alamo and The Big Gundown. The film’s opening chapter feels just like a prologue out of a Sergio Leone movie and is packed with Western iconography from its title (“Once Upon a Time in Nazi-Occupied France”) to a John Ford-style shot through the doorway. During a jailbreak sequence, the Bastards emerge from their hiding spots in a scene reminiscent of the way Henry Fonda and his men were revealed in Once Upon a Time in the West. He finds inspiration of a different sort in a projecting booth shoot-out that ends in a fashion that draws obvious allusions to John Woo’s The Killer.

No matter who Tarantino casts, sometimes the real star of his films is the dialogue. Often, Tarantino’s penchant for pop culture references and long conversations derail the actual plot and come off as self-indulgent. Take a look at the never ending breakfast conversation in Death Proof for a perfect example of that. You’re just waiting for them to shut up so we can get to the car chase. Here, Tarantino leaves you wanting more. He writes his characters like real, three-dimensional characters rather than characters that sound like they’re written by Tarantino, if that makes any sense. Yes, a few times the dialogue could have been easily trimmed, but the majority of the time, he’s able to weave the words in a way that builds the kind of tension I haven’t felt at the movies in a long time. He finds incredibly clever ways to juggle the various languages (French, German, English) that once again works to enhance the overall story. The titular Bastards are the only ones who feel one-dimensional, but that’s not a knock at all. They are cartoon characters (especially Brad Pitt), but damned if they aren’t entertaining.

Writing and directing a period piece certainly helped in reining in Tarantino though he still manages to make plenty of other references that fit the time period and the story. Shoshanna’s theater, for example, screens films from directors like G.W. Pabst and Henri-Georges Clouzot. He also manages to drop in the obligatory references to Leni Riefenstahl.

Despite all the scalping and machine gunning, the film’s highlight for me was a sequence involving Michael Fassbender (fresh off his amazing performance in Hunger) as Sgt. Archie Hicox, a stiff-upper lip British paratrooper and former film critic; Mike Myers under heavy make-up as his commanding officer, and veteran Rod Taylor in a quick cameo as Winston Churchill. There was just something so joyous to this film geek about hearing these men explain UFA in hoity toity aristocratic accents.

Tarantino does get a little too cute with a pair of anachronistic moments. He uses a 70’s style title to introduce Stiglitz that was actually rather amusing. Tarantino also chooses David Bowie’s “Cat People (Putting Out the Fire)” for a sequence with Shoshanna getting all dolled up (applying her own brand of war paint) for the film premiere. The song is the theme from Paul Schrader’s remake of Cat People, a film only Tarantino could like.

Even at a length of two and a half hours, Inglourious Basterds feels like an appetizer for a much bigger film. I don't think QT has ever been able to manipulate the wide range of emotions that he does with Basterds. He brings the action and the funny while never letting us forget the tragic ugliness of war. He's made a fantastic hybrid of the war & Western genres that alternately acts as a love letter to movies, one where two of its heroes are a film critic and a film projectionist. Imagine Cinema Paradiso with machine guns and explosions. Tarantino has already mentioned the possibility of a prequel to flesh out the backgrounds of the Bastards. Whether or not this project will ever see the light of day or fall to the wayside (i.e. The Vega Brothers, Kill Bill anime prequel) remains to be seen. This is easily one of Tarantino’s best films and one of the best releases of 2009.

Also in the picture are the gorgeous Diane Kruger as actress/spy Bridget Von Hammersmark and in voice-over cameos by Samuel L. Jackson (as the narrator) and Harvey Keitel (as Lt. Raine’s commanding officer).

Rating: ****