Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 German-American war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino and starring, Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Mélanie Laurent, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth and Diane Kruger. The film tells the fictional alternate history story of two plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's political leadership, one planned by a young French Jewish cinema proprietor (Laurent), and the other by a team of Jewish-American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt).
Plot[]
In 1941, SS colonel Hans Landa, nicknamed "The Jew Hunter", interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite. To save his family, LaPadite confesses to hiding the Jewish Dreyfus family underneath his floor. Landa orders SS soldiers to shoot through the floorboards and kill the family, but allows teenaged Shosanna to escape.
In spring 1944, 1st Special Service Force Lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits eight Jewish-American soldiers for a mission behind enemy lines, telling them they each owe him 100 Nazi scalps and will take no prisoners. Adolf Hitler personally interviews a soldier, Butz, who relates how his squad was ambushed and his sergeant beaten to death with a baseball bat by Staff Sergeant Donny Donowitz, the "Bear Jew", when the sergeant refused to divulge information. Butz survived by providing the information, but Raine carved a swastika into his forehead with a knife.
In June 1944, Shosanna Dreyfus, who has adopted the alias "Emmanuelle Mimieux", runs a cinema in Paris. She meets Fredrick Zoller, a German sniper whose exploits are to be celebrated in a Nazi propaganda film, Stolz der Nation(Nation's Pride), starring as himself. In love with Shosanna, Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the premiere at her cinema. Shosanna seizes the opportunity, secretly resolving with her projectionist and lover, Marcel, to burn down her cinema and kill the top Nazi leaders at the premiere. Meanwhile, Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a British film critic specialising in German cinema, is recruited for "Operation Kino" by British General Ed Fenech and Prime MinisterWinston Churchill. Hicox will rendezvous with their agent, German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, and the Basterds, and infiltrate and plant explosives at the premiere.
Hicox, Wilhelm Wicki, an Austrian Jew who left Europe for America after Hitler rose to power and was subsequently drafted, and Hugo Stiglitz, a convicted German sergeant who was freed by and joined the Basterds after killing 13 of his superiors, meet von Hammersmark at a tavern, where Staff Sergeant Wilhelm is celebrating his son's birth. Gestapo Officer Dieter Hellstrom notices Hicox's odd accent. Hicox gives himself away, signalling three drinks but not holding up his fingers in the German fashion. In the ensuing firefight, everyone except Wilhelm and von Hammersmark is killed. While Raine negotiates with Wilhelm, the actress shoots the sergeant. Though his German-speaking men are dead, Raine, upon learning from von Hammersmark that Hitler himself will be attending the premiere, decides to go ahead anyway. He, Donowitz and Ulmer pose as von Hammersmark's Italian escort and cameramen. Later, Landa finds von Hammersmark's shoe and her autographed napkin after investigating the tavern shooting.
At the premiere, Landa, who can speak Italian, is not fooled and sees von Hammersmark privately. He makes her wear the shoe, which fits, and strangles her to death, before ordering Raine and Private Smithson Utivich's capture. Landa has Raine contact his commanding officer with the OSS and brokers a deal: in exchange for not hindering the explosives plan and thus ending the war, he receives immunity, US citizenship, financial security, and the Medal of Honor for himself and the rest of the members of the operation. During the screening, Zoller slips away to the projection room to see Shosanna, who rejects his advances but then has him lock the door. With his back turned, she fatally shoots him, but he manages to turn and fatally shoot her as well. Meanwhile, Ulmer and Donowitz manage to dispatch the soldiers guarding Hitler.
A spliced-in clip of Shosanna's cackling in the cinema informs the audience that they are about to be killed by a Jew. Marcel, having locked the cinema, ignites a pile of extremely flammable nitrate film behind the screen. Ulmer and Donowitz burst into the screening as it burns and riddle Hitler, Goebbels, and the trapped crowd withsubmachine gun fire, until the bombs go off and destroy the cinema.
Landa and his radio operator drive Raine and Utivich across the Allied territory, whereupon they surrender. To Landa's horror, Raine shoots the radio operator and has Utivich collect his scalp. Raine is unable to accept the notion that Landa might go unpunished for his career as a Nazi officer, so he carves a swastika into his forehead as a permanent reminder of his crimes. Proudly inspecting his handiwork, he remarks to Utivich that "this just might be my masterpiece".
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