Jeri Jacquin

Coming to 4K Ultra HD, Bluray and Digital from director Quentin Tarantino and Universal Pictures Home Entertainment comes one of the most stellar films ever made with the 2009  classic INGLORIOUS BASTERDS.

It is 1941 France and the SS Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz) is looking for a Jewish family. Suspecting a farmer is lying to him, what happens as a result shows the absolute heinousness of Landa. A young girl named Shosanna does manages to escape with her life and nothing else.

Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) has put together a group called the Basterds with Donny Donowitz (Eli Roth), Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger), Corporal Wicki (Gedeon Burkhard) and more. Their goal? To bring fear and horror of their own to the Nazis, so much so that it gets back to Hitler and drives him to madness.

Emmanuelle Mimieux (Melanie Laurent) runs a cinema in Paris and keeps to herself but it does not last long. Capturing the attention of Fredrick Zoller (Daniel Bruhl), a German who is celebrated for the number of soldiers he has killed and for a film called Stolz der Nation (Nation’s Pride).

Trying to impress Emmanuelle, he wants the premier of the film to be held at her film house but first must convince Joseph Goebbels. She must also meet Landa who is head of security and is told that as long as she runs the projection, there should not be a problem having the premiere.

Learning of what is happening, Lt. Archie Hicox (Michael Fassbender) is brought in to help the Basterds plan a little surprise at the premiere. Meeting undercover agent Bridget von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger), everything is going smoothly – until it doesn’t. Now, Raine must take Donowitz, Ultivich (B.J. Novak) and Ulmer (Omar Doom) along with Stiglitz and Wicki to get the job done.

Landa knows something is wrong and being the steely eyed rat that he is makes a deal so that the plan can move ahead. Both Landa and the Germans in the theatre are not ready for what is to come!

Pitt as Lt. Aldo Raine is a man who says exactly what he means and holds nothing back. The calm force behind the Basterds, he leads them forward further and further into occupied France to make sure and take down as many Nazi’s as they can. Pitt is nothing short of exceptional in this role and did something fantastic with this character in the look, sound and feel of Lt. Raine. He is charmingly frightening and who would have thought those two words would ever go together.

Waltz as Landa is also charmingly frightening in the look, sound and feel of this totally calm and collected murderer. Seeing the film in 2009 my first thought was, ‘man does he love to hear himself talk’ and it is in years since that I realized that his talking brought about all the right fear he wanted from his ‘victims’. Just wait for that sweat to pour down their foreheads and – he had them! Waltz is an incredible actor and has proven that teaming up with Tarantino again for DJANGO UNCHAINED.

Laurent as Emmanuelle has been trying to live the best life she can under the circumstances. Finding a bit of a harbor in the cinema, everything she had been running from has finally caught up with her. Laurent is exceptional giving her character mannerisms and knowing exactly how she plans to rid herself of past pain. Kruger as von Hammersmark is the femme fatale who can easily work both sides of the fence. Having been a fan of Kruger for a long time, watching her bring everything campy to von Hammersmark, the switch is flipped when one false move sounds the alarms.

Fassbender as Lt. Hicox is fantastic and his scene in the basement bar is everything. There is a standoff like no other and, as with many of the characters in this film, he plays his part until the bitter end. Roth as Donnie “The Bear Jew” is just plain insane from start to finish, His most memorable scene with the clanging of the bat on a bridge wall can never be done again with the same intensity or insanity.

Bruhl as Zoller is a soldier being celebrated for all the wrong reasons in the minds of everyone but the Germans. Giving his character a bit of naiveté and having been shot by Cupids arrow, Bruhl seems to be the only character in the film that doesn’t have a plan.

Shout out to Schweiger as Stiglitz because he is a man who does not have to say one stinkin’ word because his face tells you everything frightening thing you need to know and, I loved it.

Other cast include August Diehl as Dieter Hellstrom, Denis Menochet as Perrier LaPadite, Hilmar Eichhorn as Emil Jannings, Martin Wutke as Adolf Hiter, Sylvester Groth as Joseph Goebbels, Mike Meyers as General Ed French, Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill, Alexander Fehling as Sgt. Wilhelm, Richard Sammel as Sgt. Rachtman, Sonke Mohring as Butz, Paul Rust as Andy Kagan, Michael Bacall as Michael Zimmerman, Carlos Fidle as Simon Sakowitz and Samuel L. Jackson as the narrator.

Universal Pictures Home Entertainment has just added an amazing film to their library and making it available for us to all experience and re-experience in our own home theaters. There are films of every genre available from scary to drama to family films. For more of what they have to offer please visit www.uphe.com.

MOVIES ANYWHERE gives viewers the ability to download the Movies Anywhere App. With that you can view films by downloading or streaming to your favorite device using a Digital Code. For more information on Movies Anywhere please visit www.MoviesAnywhere.com.

The 4K Ultra HD and Bluray Bonus Features include: Over Two Hours of Bonus’, Extended and Alternate Scenes, The New York Times Talks, Roundtable Discussion with Quentin Tarantino, Brad Pitt and Elvin Mitchell, Nation’s Pride, Full Feature THE MAKING OF NATION’S PRIDE, The Original INGLORIOUS BASTERDS, A Conversation with Rod Taylor and more!

INGLORIOUS BASTERDS is first and foremost a violent, sometimes shockingly so film. Now that that is out of the way, it is also a brilliant piece of filmmaking. Tarantino as a screenwriter has always given theatre goers something to look forward to, always original and always in-your-face. As a director, he does not shy away from making it clear that the worlds he has written about are vivid, and cinematically eye opening (and even jaw dropping).

The cast is stunning from end to end and irreplaceable if anyone gets a wild hair thinking of remaking this in a few years. Everything about this film screams for us to throw away our notions and give into the story Tarantino is trying to tell. He takes thoughts and turns them into film with and ending that makes many feel uncomfortable but yet – not.

Tarantino’s film is a must have for any home theatre library and now with 4K Ultra HD you can be sure everything you see will be sharper than ever.

In the end – once upon a time in Nazi occupied France!

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