Inglourious Basterds "Once upon a time in Nazi occupied France..."

Director: Quentin Tarantino

Starring: Brad Pitt & Christoph Waltz

"Inglourious Basterds" tells the story of Shosanna Dreyfus, played by Mélanie Laurent, whose family is murdered by Col. Hans Landa, nicknamed the "The Jew Hunter," and his group of men. Shosanna manages to escape and four years later runs a small theater in France.

Shosanna meets a young man named Fredrick Zoller, who managed to kill close to 300 American soldiers, fighting from a bell tower. Joseph Goebbels, the Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda and one of Hitler's right hand men, has just made a new movie entitled "Nation's Pride" about Zoller's story and Zoller wants the premiere to take place at Shosanna's theater.

Shosanna agrees, partially out of fear and for revenge. She plans to trap everyone inside and then set the theater on fire.

"The Basterds" are a group of American Jewish soldiers, led by Lt. Aldo Raine, played by Brad Pitt, that have a reputation for terrorizing Nazi soldiers and when they discover Hitler is going to be at the premiere of "Nation's Pride," they decide to crash the party.

If you are hoping for another "Saving Private Ryan," "Inglourious Basterds" may let you down. Not only was there not a single battle scene, "Inglourious Basterds" is not even historically accurate.

But neither of those, I believe, make "Basterds" less enjoyable. In fact, I think it enhances the quality of the film. We have all taken history classes and know the outcome of World War II, but what "Basterds" allows us to do is temporarily throw away what we learned in school and make a make believe WWII story a lot of fun.

Tarantino's dialogue is, of course, top notch in "Basterds." Before I got to watch the film I was discussing with my buddies if they thought Tarantino's always amusing pop culture dialogue was going to be in "Basterds." I guessed it may not, due to the time period and the nature of the story, but sure enough it was.

I did feel, however, that every scene was just stretched out as long as it could have been, but not one scene let me down. Every scene just had a great climax and conclusion.

I think my only complaint with "Basterds" was Eli Roth's acting, who played Sgt. Donny Donowitz, nicknamed "The Bear Jew". But before I start criticizing Roth, I would like it to be known that I love Roth. "Cabin Fever (Roth's directorial debut), "Hostel," and "Hostel II" are some of my favortie horror films. But I felt Roth was trying to hard. He went from being a small indie horror film director to acting right next to Brad Pitt in "Basterds." I'm sure that's not an easy job.

But watch "Basterds" and have fun. Try to catch it while it is still in theaters!

8 out of 10