GRADE: A

As expected, director Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” [sic] not only goes well beyond anything ever imagined in the 1977 Italian original, it also manages to turn the entire World War II convention squarely on its head!

A rousing epic that rightfully deserves a place among the best and most unusual the genre has to offer, it can in no way be considered revisionist despite its altering of certain key portions of history. What those alterations include is just part of the “fun” to this violent, bloody and sardonic tour de force of vengeance and coincidence in war-torn France.

Ostensibly, the film follows a group of Jewish American soldiers (plus one highly motivated ex-Nazi) as they traverse the French countryside sewing terror and wreaking havoc on the Germans and their French collaborators through some of the most atrocious counter-insurgency imaginable, including scalping and dismembering the enemy.

As the group’s leader, Lt. Aldo Raine (whose name is a nod to Aldo Ray, an actor who appeared in many Hollywood war films) is fond of informing the Basterd’s quarry that he and his men are not in the prisoner taking business; they’re in the killing Nazi business—and business is booming.

Never one to follow a linear storyline or construct a narrative driven by a single character, Tarantino’s screenplay also follows the exploits of Shosanna, a Jewish farm girl who escapes to Paris after her entire family is killed, and Col. Hans Landa, a.k.a. the Jew Hunter, a particularly squirrelly and well-educated Nazi who delights in verbally tormenting his prey before dispatching them to eternity.

Moving quickly from an extremely tense and well-mounted opening sequence set early in the war to the year 1944 and the streets of Paris, where Shosanna now owns and operates a movie theater, the plot thickens to include an improbable plan to assassinate Hitler and the rest of the top Nazi command at the premiere of a new German propaganda film.

Once again, Tarantino shows his unrivaled expertise at stringing together multiple plotlines, developing large numbers of characters and securing strong performances from an ensemble cast, each of whom gives an inspired rendition that movingly walks the razor’s edge between intense realism and over-the-top parody, all of which have become signature aspects of the director’s unique filmmaking style.

That style includes an allegiance to the set-piece, and “Inglourious Basterds” contains several that are unlike any ever seen in a World War II film; clear demonstrations of Tarantino’s complete cinematic virtuosity and mastery of dialogue and action scenes.

Like all of the director’s work, it’s difficult to describe without giving away the surprises found along the way, but before it wraps up—in a one-of-a-kind explosion (literally) of Allied firepower and Jewish vengeance—viewers will have a front row seat to one of the most audacious exercises in scorched earth ever conceived.

It’s vintage Tarantino—funny, irreverent, in your face, and loaded with bits of material for classical film buffs to chew on, “Inglourious Basterds” has too much dramatic heft to dismiss it as mere style over substance. And while the ending belies the truth of that which comes before it, you’ve got to love the maverick filmmaker for the final bullets he unleashes and the well-deserving targets he has chosen.

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