INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS (2009)
Label: Arrow Video
Region Code: Region-Free
Rating: R
Duration: 153 Minutes
Audio: English DTS-HA MA 5.1 with Optional English Subtitles
Video: HDR10 2160p HD Widescreen (2.40:1)
Diretor: Quentin Tarantino
Cast: Brad Pitt, Eli Roth, Til Schweiger, B. J. Novak, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Sylvester Groth, Martin Wuttke, Jacky Ido, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender
Quentin Tarantino's deliciously exploitative WWII revenge fantasy Inglourious Basterds (2009) features a Nazi-scalping squad of American soldiers, known as "The Basterds," they're on a righteous mission to exterminate the The Third Reich as brutally as possible. Led by Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt, Once Upon A Time In Hollywood), the Basterds are comprised of Jewish soldiers who terrorize the Nazi divisions they encounter, among them Sergeant Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz (Eli Roth, Death Proof), Sergeant Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger, SLC Punk!), Smithson "The Little Man" Utivich (B. J. Novak, The Office), a rogue German soldier who murdered his squad and translator Corporal Wilhelm Wick. They've made a name for themselves in Nazi occupied France where they have been brutally dispatching Nazis and keeping their scalps as souvenirs, always leaving one survivor behind with a swastika carved into their forehead, to spread fear among the German ranks.
The film opens with a scene of SS Standartenführer
Hans "The Jew Hunter" Landa (Christoph Waltz, Django Unchained) arriving at the farmhouse of a dairy farmer and his daughters, interrogating the man about the whereabouts of some missing Jews who were his neighbors. The scene establishes Landa as a quirky, intelligent and malevolent man. In the aftermath the farmer gives up the whereabout of the Jews, hidden beneath his floorboards and the SS pepper the floor with machine gunfire, killing all except a girl named Shosanna who flees into the hills.
Three years later we find Shosanna Dreyfus (Mélanie Laurent,
The Nightingale) now living in Paris, running a cinema under the name Emmanuelle. Its there that she meets a handsome Nazi soldier named Fredrick Zoller (
The Falcoln and the Winter Soldier), the star of a new Nazi propaganda film called Nation's Pride, which documents his story of killing 250 Allied soldiers in a battle from his perch in a sniper tower. Zoller develops a things for Emmanuelle, much to her disgust, and tries to curry favor with her by convincing Joseph Goebbels (Sylvester Groth,
The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) to hold the premiere of Nation's Pride at her cinema.
With the high profile premiere sure to draw in high-ranking Nazi officials, including der Fuhrer himself Adolph Hitler (Martin Wuttke, Hanna), Emmanuelle and her lover Marcel (Jacky Ido, Lockout) set in motion a plan to kill a bunch of Nazis, including her family's murderer Hans Landa, by setting the cinema on fire, complete with a short film of herself introducing the Nazi to their death!
Tarantino's film is a delightful bit of historical fantasy, along the way were treated to little vignettes of the Basterds Nazi-killing adventures, and a sub-plot involving a German film star turned Allied spy Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger, National Treasure), who is meets British film critic turned Commando Lieutenant Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender, X-Men First Class) at a small pub in France, also rendezvousing with the Basterds, who plan to tag along with her to the Nazi film premiere to cause a ruckus, but Hicox's strange German accent and an errant hand gesture threaten to derail the whole Nazi killing plan.
Tarantino's film is a absolutely epic and can be a bit languid in it's pacing, but he fills the screen with such fascinating characters that I am always happy to go down the rabbit hole with him. The dialogue is so tasty, the scenery is delicious, and his WWII revenge fantasies are the stuff of cinematic legend. I also thought it was quite interesting how much he winks right at the audience, having so many film connected characters in his story; we have actors, a film critic, a cinema owner and even a movie within a movie, and some flammable film stock is what sets the fire in the final reel of the film that give Shosanna her revenge, not to mention a final line of dialogue from Pitt that is clearly Tarantino bragging to the audience that this might just be his masterpiece, just ass the screen cuts to his title credit - the balls on that guy!
The Pitt scenes are terrific but its Waltz that steals the show here as 'The Jew Hunter' Hans Landa, he's at one a clever detective and a quirky cog in the insidious Nazi war machine, but so a super-corny fan-boy of American pop culture - there's a scene where he attempts the American colonialism "Bingo" by excitedly uttering "that's a bingo!", which always gets a laugh out of me, it's great stuff, and how he figures into the finale and the fall of The Third Reich is perfection.
Audio/Video: Inglourious Basterds (2009) arrives on 4K UHD from Arrow Video on 2160p UHD framed in 2.40:1 widescreen with HDR10. This utilizes the same master used by Universal Pictures for their own 4K UHD a few years ago. The image to my eyes appears identical. There's plenty of fine detail in the close-up, color saturation pleases and black levels are rock solid. The 4K resolution delivers fine grain that is better resolved with close-ups of facial features and period clothing textures revealing minute details that easily advance over the 2009 Blu-ray. Additionally the HDR color-grading strengthens primaries, especially those Nazi-reds, but the biggest benefactor is the deeper blacks and more layered contrast which improves depth.
There's no Atmos audio upgrade this Arrow Video release either, but we do get the same great DTS-HD MA 5.1 from the 2009 Blu-ray, which was great then and still fine today, zero complaints. Its a solid track that handles both the atmospheric and aggressive moments with equal fidelity, including the terrific score selection from Ennio Morricone (
Cinema Paradiso).
In my opinion the there's no real A/V upgrade here compared to the Universal 4K release. The real reason to upgrade are the new extras and the limited edition packaging extras. New disc extras stuff starts off with a brand new Audio Commentary by film critic and author Tim Lucas: the 11-min What Would Sally Do?, a new interview with editor Fred Raskin; the 22-min Blood Fiction, a new interview with special make-up effects supervisor Greg Nicotero; the 11-min Doomstruck, a new interview with actor Omar Doom; the 22-min Making it Right, a new visual essay by film critic Walter Chaw, author of A Walter Hill Film; 20-min the Film History on Fire, a new visual essay by film scholar Pamela Hutchinson, author of BFI Film Classics Pandora’s Box, and the 16-min Filmmaking in Occupied France, a new interview with film scholar Christine Leteux, author of Continental Films: French Cinema Under German Control.
Archival extras include 31-min Roundtable Discussion, an archival interview with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Elvis Mitchell; 11-min of Extended and Alternate Scenes; the 6-min Nation’s Pride; the 4-min The Making of Nation’s Pride. The only extras not carried over from the Universal 4K release is the 68-min The New York Times Talk, so hang onto that release if you're an extras junkie.
