Inglourious Basterds

Inglourious Basterds is a 2009 black comedy war film written and directed by Quentin Tarantino. It stars an ensemble cast including Brad Pitt, Christoph Waltz, Michael Fassbender, Eli Roth, Diane Kruger, Daniel Brühl, Til Schweiger, Mélanie Laurent and Mike Myers. The film tells an alternate history story of two converging plots to assassinate Nazi Germany's leadership at a Paris cinema—one through a British operation largely carried out by a team of Jewish American soldiers led by First Lieutenant Aldo Raine (Pitt), and another by French Jewish cinema proprietor Shosanna Dreyfus (Laurent) who seeks to avenge her murdered family. Both are pitted against Hans Landa (Waltz), an SS colonel with a fearsome reputation.

The title (but not the story) was inspired by Italian director Enzo G. Castellari's 1978 Euro War film The Inglorious Bastards, but deliberately misspelled as "a Basquiat-esque touch". Tarantino wrote the script in 1998, but struggled with the ending and chose instead to direct the two-part film Kill Bill. After directing Death Proof in 2007, Tarantino returned to work on Inglourious Basterds. A co-production between the United States and Germany, the film began principal photography in October 2008 and was filmed in Germany and France with a $70 million production budget.

Inglourious Basterds premiered on May 20, 2009, at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival, and received a wide release in theaters in Germany on August 20, and in the United States on August 21. The Weinstein Company distributed the film in the United States, while Universal Pictures handled international distribution. It was a commercial success, grossing $321.5 million worldwide, becoming Tarantino's highest-grossing film to that point, until it was surpassed by Django Unchained (2012). The film received critical acclaim, with Waltz's performance as Hans Landa being singled out for praise, but some criticized the historical liberties taken. It also won multiple awards and nominations, among them eight Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay). For his role as Landa, Waltz won the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor Award, as well as the BAFTA, Screen Actors Guild, Critics' Choice, Golden Globe, and Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

In 1941, Austrian SS-Standartenführer Hans Landa interrogates French dairy farmer Perrier LaPadite about a fugitive Jewish family, the Dreyfuses. He boasts his nickname, "The Jew Hunter," then offers LaPadite amnesty if he will give up the Dreyfuses. LaPadite tearfully admits that they are hiding under his floor. Landa's men massacre the Dreyfuses, but one of them, young Shosanna, escapes unharmed.

Three years later, U.S. Army lieutenant Aldo Raine recruits Jewish-American soldiers to the "Basterds," a black ops commando unit tasked with instilling fear among Nazis in occupied France by killing and scalping them. The group includes Sergeant Donny "The Bear Jew" Donowitz, privates first class Smithson Utivich and Omar Ulmer, rogue German sergeant Hugo Stiglitz, and Austrian-born translator Corporal Wilhelm Wicki. Raine leaves a swastika mark on surviving German soldiers so they can't hide their Nazi affiliations after the war.

Shosanna now operates a cinema in Paris under the name Emmanuelle Mimieux and meets Fredrick Zoller, a famed German sniper set to star in the German propaganda film Stolz der Nation (Nation's Pride). Infatuated with "Emmanuelle," Zoller convinces Joseph Goebbels to hold the film's premiere at her cinema. Landa, the premiere's head of security, interrogates Shosanna but doesn't reveal if he recognizes her. She plots with her Afro-French lover and projectionist, Marcel, to kill the German leaders by burning down the cinema with her collection of highly flammable nitrate films.

British Commando Lieutenant Archie Hicox, a former film critic and fluent German speaker, is recruited for Operation Kino, an attack on the premiere with the Basterds. Disguised as German officers, Hicox, Stiglitz, and Wicki meet with German film star Bridget von Hammersmark, an undercover Allied agent, in an occupied town at a tavern unexpectedly full of German soldiers. They sit down and play board games together.

Hicox's unusual accent arouses suspicion from Wehrmacht sergeant Wilhelm and SS Sturmbannführer Dieter Hellström, who joins Hicox's group when his suspicions are aroused. Hicox and Hammersmark convince him they are genuine, but Hicox blows their cover with a non-German hand gesture. Everyone is killed in the ensuing gunfight except Wilhelm and a wounded von Hammersmark. Raine negotiates with Wilhelm for von Hammersmark's release until she shoots Wilhelm dead.