Inglourious Basterds

A film set in the Second World War that rewrites history. It opens at a farmhouse in France. An SS colonel drinks milk and makes conversation, and for twenty minutes nothing happens; then it does. The girl who escapes that scene is Shosanna. She goes to Paris and years later runs a cinema. The second line is an American unit. Made up of Jewish soldiers, dropped into France, with one job: killing German soldiers. They work outside the rules and do not hide it. The third line is British intelligence and a German film star. All three meet on the same evening: a propaganda film is premiering at Shosanna's cinema and the entire German command will be there. From there the film is a suspense piece. Long scenes at tables, a mispronounced word, a hand signal held wrongly, and violence breaking out each time. What the narrative is interested in is not war but language: German, French, English and Italian are spoken, and almost every death comes from somebody not knowing a language well enough. There is also cinema itself. Film stock is used as a weapon, and that is not an accident. Christoph Waltz's part saved the production. The director had said he would abandon the film if he could not cast Landa; Waltz was chosen because he could carry four languages, and won at Cannes and at the Academy Awards for it. It was shot largely in Germany, at the Babelsberg studios. Brad Pitt, Mélanie Laurent, Diane Kruger, Michael Fassbender and Til Schweiger are in the cast. Quentin Tarantino wrote and directed. Who it is for: anyone who likes suspense built out of long dialogue scenes. Who it is not for: anyone expecting fidelity to history; the film changes the end of the war outright and does not spare the violence.